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Just like any team, Jets need to learn from history in their draft evaluations.
I think Joe Douglas is very good at his job. As far as I’m concerned, he’s part of the solution for the Jets, not the problem.
He has a good eye for talent and he knows how to fix the culture. He was in Baltimore, a place with one of the NFL’s great cultures, but there is only so much he can do.
Has he missed on a few big picks, no doubt, but who hasn’t?
The success rate on NFL first-round picks, based on a number of studies, is around 53 percent.
So it’s essentially 50-50.
Douglas hit on Garrett Wilson, Jermaine Johnson, Alijah Vera-Tucker and Breece Hall. I know Hall was a second-round pick, but many had a first-round grade on him, like the Jets. I know Vera-Tucker has had some injury issues, but is clearly a very good player.
He missed on Mekhi Becton and Zach Wilson, and he and others in their Jets personnel department can learn from those two picks moving forward.
With Becton, they made a mistake thinking that the player’s weight would not be a problem.
Yes, his knee injury in the first game of his second season was a freak accident where a player rolled him as he was blocking somebody, but the rehab issues that followed, including reinjuring the knee in the 2022 camp, ending his season, were probably weight related. He was reportedly close to 400 pounds on a surgical knee. Not ideal.
As for Wilson, the Jets and others were probably too enamored with the highlight film plays from Wilson, and not his down-to-down, series-to-series work.
FS1’s Mark Schlereth described the Wilson love affair perfectly in a recent quote about the struggle evaluating college quarterbacks. This quote wasn’t about Wilson, but it could very well could be.
“People marvel at the things that happen three times a games,” Schlereth said. “‘Oh my God, did you see that throw, he scrambled around and then he threw it.’ We see it in the workouts all the time, the pro days, “Oh my God, he scrambling to the right, and turned to the left and threw it to the left and it traveled 67 yards and it was a perfect dime,’ and we get all enamored, but how many times does that happen a game, vs. what happens down to down, series to series.”
That sums up Wilson perfectly.
He hits some grand slam home runs sometimes, but often can’t sustain drives, because of his inconsistent decision-making and his career 57 percent completion, where too many passes hit the ground.
So two big lessons for the Jets moving forward in the draft process.
One is don’t pick a player with weight issues, don’t expect that to change once you get them in the building. Granted, Becton did lose weight last off-season and did get in the best shape of his career, but it might have been a little too late. His right knee will probably never be the same.
And the other lesson is don’t pick quarterbacks based on arm talent and highlight film plays. Pick them on their consistency down-in and down-out, not on their grand slam home runs.
April 11, 2024
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