Hael

Yea, he was one of the worst football players i’ve ever seen. He has no idea how to play football, and it was stepping on shells around these parts for a long time, trying to be tactful about what we were seeing on the field. 90% of the problems the Jets have had over the past few seasons, were on the failures of the terrible qb play. It’s just that simple. The takeaway from this sad state of affairs, is to never take a player that is so raw, that he needs 4 years+ to even have a chance of developing. In the modern NFL you will never catch up before the hatchet drops.

Everyone knows we are a win now team. But of all of these guys, who is the one that helps the most in that purpose. Bowers is a TE, as someone mentioned they rarely contribute year 1 outside of a few plays and Conklin will probably be better for the year. Odunze is also RAW. You throw up a few 50/50 balls that he will make, but you aren’t looking at more than 500 yrds/game. It takes time to learn route running. I do think he is a stud though. The only WR that instantly contributes at near all star lvl IMO, is Marvin Harrison JR, but we wont get him. So that leaves OL. Do any of the OL really start on this team (outside of Alt, who again we wont get)? Probably not. Which goes back to the really unsexy pick… Jared Verse. He is probably the best overall player in the draft outside of Marvin Harrison, Caleb and Alt. He does instantly contribute in Saleh’s system. We would also, surely, have the best defense in the NFL….

The problem for ZW at this point is that he has very few paths to ever making it in this league. If he stayed in the Jets system, given his current bare bones level he would realistically need another year or two of riding the bench, and only if he was getting the reps of a qb2 at the minimum. (As a qb3 he would get even fewer reps). If he goes to another system, he needs 2-3 years at the minimum, and that with qb1 reps. Since very few teams will give him a qb2 role, its difficult to see how he ever quite catches up before he ages out of the ‘young, raw but might have potential’ niche the NFL carves out for these guys. This is what happens with extremely raw qbs. They just never quite have enough time. Teams just can’t afford to gamble on them for very long, and then its too late.

The move to big linemen happened in the 90s, and has actually been declining for a number of years in favor of smaller linemen that are better at zone reads. Edge runners in the 80s and 90s were hitting 4.5s as well. Generally speaking, I disagree with the ‘bigger, stronger, faster’ narrative. It seems to me it plateau’d in the 90s and really is more about depth than anything else. You had your 4.2 Primetime and Daryl Greenes, Randy Moss’s, LTs and Dallas Olines back then and its not like you are going to find people that really beat those guys in athleticism. You could probably make a case that the 30th best DE is faster now than in the 90s, but it probably comes down to slightly better test taking prep at the combine and sports science keeping players knees intact rather than sheer genetic talent. If anything, I think there is a bit of a top end talent problem in the league right now. Where are the Julio Jones + Megatron players? The best DE/DT of this generation just retired and who replaces that? I haven’t seen a Barry Sanders talent rb for a very long time. What about a Revis like db? His prime was 15 years ago…

I’m going to assume Rogers plays at the level of his last year in Gb. If so he, would be around 6th or 7th. Mahomes/Burrows/Herbert/Allen/Lamar are better than he is at this stage in his career. Stroud and Lawrence aren’t yet, but Stroud will be soon (possibly this year at some point). Watson could have a comeback year, in which case he would also be above (his best year in Texas was better than Rogers last). Overall, thats more than good enough to get us deep into the playoffs given the team we have (I continue to think we would have been an early exit playoff team last year as well)

An AI bot maybe?

Its pretty obvious that the trade deals were along the lines of the Jets giving up assets (money/picks) in order to offload his crappy salary to another team. As it stands very few teams in the league are going to want ZW. His ‘potential’ is much overhyped around these parts, and at this stage in his career pretty irrelevant. Results, leadership and skill matter now, especially when no team is going to offer him a contract for what he could be, years after that contract is done. And what he is, is an unbelievably raw bottom of the barrel backup at best (50-70 amongst qbs). Realistically he is one bad offseason/mistake/injury away from being out of the league. Be sure that JD wont be keeping a third string problem qb on the roster, so every team in the league knows that he’s going to get cut and the collective response to Woody’s proclamations is a collective fart.

The universe likes to punish the NY Jets.

I’ll go to the grave saying the Rogers contract was a good decision. In fact it was the only decision. The Jets were in a terrible spot, b/c they knew they had busted on a high pick qb, but the rest of the very young team was turning into a borderline superbowl talent squad. You basically get 2 or 3 years of that before all the rookies contracts come into their own and then its over and you are back to middle of the pack talent wise (and still looking for a qb). The brass knew perfectly well they were going nowhere with Wilson, so you need a new vet qb for a small window and hopefully draft the replacement at some point. Rogers was by far the best available veteran qb on the market. He was the only one that gave them any sort of a shot at a superbowl and in addition was only league average in terms of compensation (the contract described above is indeed about average for a starting qb). So while trading the farm for Lamar Jackson obviously upgrades your team more, you still basically only have that year or two window and then you are even more effed on the other side of it. We chose the all in, but only effed for one season after he retires route, as opposed to all in and then you are screwed for two or three more years (see Denver).

Onwenu is a major young talent. Better than Thuney is/was. He is fairly durable (having played through pain this year), and works at all positions. However, he is absolutely not a fit for our scheme. The Patriots tried a zone scheme a season or two ago and dropped it after 3 or 4 games b/c it was such a disaster for them. Onwenu was terrible in those games. He is the big strong plodding type, and really not made for that type of movement. Paying him big bucks for what would be diminished results would be a fireable offense.

Its more than that. There are a lot of structural problems with the Jets. This was most visibly seen near the end of the Maccagnan years, where you had non football guys (VPs etc) that were beginning to pressure the GM/Coaching staff with decision making. That doesn’t work at all. Decision by committee is a terrible way to run an organization. It of course ended particularly badly as we ended up with Joe Douglas (a good hire) basically having to deal with a dead man walking coach (Gase), and we lost an entire draft class b/c we had no long term system in place and the players we got had to basically be project type guys who could be molded. Then of course there is the choice of medical staff (The Jets have one of the worst medical guys in the entire league as they are constantly in the news for the wrong reasons), as well as the crappy turf situaton as well as the season ticket holder grief. Etc etc. So yea, we are basically bottom of the barrel in terms of front office, and it trickles down. More recently with the leaks and the internal grief that managed to spill over into the tabloids. Its just not a good look.

Baker is in a completely different league than ZW, lol! At his worse, you were looking at a borderline starting caliber qb, but that would make him a top notch backup. At his best, you get the recent Tampa experience. I mean there is a reason a lot of teams were interested in Baker throughout his NFL career, despite a rather prickly personality. End of the day he at least can run an NFL offense. Meanwhile, ZW is a bottom of the barrel backup at his very best and probably a qb3 in current terms. In terms of developmental prospects, you are likely looking at years before he would scratch a starting position in a straight up competition. He’s also in a terrible position with his contract. Someone is probably dumb enough to give him a roster spot next year, but he is one bad training camp from being out of the league.

First paragraph is definitely true. It was also predictable b/c despite all the puff pieces and fan gaslighting, his college tape showed pretty major problems right from the getgo (and they were pointed out by many people). As far as JD is concerned. He had a pretty nasty choice in that draft. It was essentially a draft where the team couldn’t afford not to take a qb (im pretty sure there would have been a revolution if we picked D), but it was known to be essentially a 1 qb draft (and a bunch of late 1st round stretch talents like Fields) and early day 2 safe picks (Mac Jones etc). Desperation and the media gaslit a bunch of people into overvaluing the remaining qbs and so we were left with the sad choice of picking one well outside their value range. The right play of course with hindsight would have been to trade out of the 2nd and pick sure value (like getting Penei Sewell and eventually a qb like Mills on day 2), but I don’t think that sort of pick would have made sense given where we were. It made sense to gamble on a qb and it was indeed the perfect time to do that (right at the start of a rebuild). And sometimes you just have to take a swing. So I will never begrudge Douglas for making the pick, even if I kinda knew that it wasn’t going to work out.

Tampa Bay went from a perennial loser to a superbowl winner in a single year. Ditto with the Rams/Stafford and Denver/Manning. In each case, the qb transformed bad to midling offenses into elite units. People underestimate just how big the gap is between garbage tier qbs like Wilson and simply NFL average.

Eh, I don’t know if I take Mahomes over prime Brady (2007 or 2011 versions).. Its close. The irony is the most dominant versions of Brady were on teams where he didn’t win rings. Mahomes does some things clearly better than Brady, but Brady does things that Mahomes can’t do either. Those things are often overlooked and look less spectacular, but they are nonetheless super valuable in the playoffs (and which directly led to him having an edge in the h2h) I also think Brady, like Montana is a slightly better big game qb. Still I take Pat’s first six years over Bradys (despite the ring differential, as he is simply a better qb at this stage) The real difference maker though, if I was starting a new franchise, is the fact that Brady is like half the salary cap price. That’s just not fair and makes it a pretty easy pick.