The Best Player Available Draft For The Jets

[YJF]

This is really what The 2006 NFL Draft is for The Jets.

In the past with The Jets and with alot of NFL teams. They can tell you they have a board set up ranking every single player but the truth is that teams draft for need. 9 times out of 10, an NFL team will draft a player that fills a need over a player that is ranked higher. Most busts take place when teams ignore value for need. It's well documented and proven.

Very rarely do teams deviate from their gameplan and draft the best ranked player on their board. Dallas walked into last years draft on one clear mission. Draft 3-4 players for their new defense. They could care less who else was on the board. They identified DeMarcus Ware and Shawne Merriman as their top two edge rushing OLB's and they were going to draft one of them. That was a scenario where drafting for need worked out. But many times, Teams draft poorly because they ignore value for need. A great gm like Ron Wolf admitted to making this mistake when drafting offensive tackle Jon Michaels out of USC when they passed up key defensive players who could have helped offset the eventual loss of Reggie White. You end up drafting the best available OT because you need one even though there are better players at other positions available to you.

What happens is that when teams get to the draft, They normally address the areas that they didn't in free agency. Sometimes their drafts take on a need overload. I remember The Packers desperate for CB's drafting 3 on the first day a few years back. The idea is take 3 same position players and hope that one pans out. The Raiders took this stance last year with Fabian Washington and Stanford Routt.

The Jets are not in this type of position. Their new regime doesn't operate this way. They are going to draft for value rather than need at every single spot and their free agency has set them up perfectly for just that. Despite signing and acquiring a QB, Two LB's, a DE, a CB, C and DT. They are still in the market for all those positions.

Drafting for value rather than need almost always works out. A clear example of this is Baltimore. Ozzie Newsome drafted Todd Heap when he had Shannon Sharpe. He drafted Terrell Suggs when he had Ray Lewis, Peter Boulware and Edgerton Hartwell at LB. He drafted Ed Reed when he had Rod Woodson.

So with The Jets in The 2006 draft. Don't rule out anything. That's really the beauty of this years jets draft and that's why it's hard to pinpoint what direction this franchise is going to take in two weeks. I LOVE IT.

[GreenBeans]

Isn't great to not have some "inside source" blabbing about what is going on within the organization. Ignorance is bliss!

[madmike1]

Isn't great to not have some "inside source" blabbing about what is going on within the organization. Ignorance is bliss!

Very true. At least you have the feeling, real or not, that this front office knows what they are doing.

[raffyD]

If they go BPA then I don't care which positions are drafted, I would be happy with this.

[madmike1]

mispost

[serphnx]

I guess it depends on your definition of bust. From my view, most players regardless of where and for what reason they were picked turn out to be busts, in that they usually aren't even on the team 3 years later, if even that long.

I'd like to see all this data you are using that proves all this. Conventional wisdom would tell me otherwise.

I don't really see the point of drafting a position that you have pro bowlers in, although that isn't exactly going to be a problem with us. I thought the old regime must have been doing BPA, because they certainly were not drafting based on need.

My stance on this is to just draft intelligently. That means I skew it a bit more towards need, but the fact of the matter is that is a very flexible term. Every year, you're going to have many needs anyway. As long as you're valuing players correctly, you're going to wind drafting closer to value regardless. After you get past the first 3 rounds, there really isn't a concrete value ranking list that you can make anyway, so you're better off just filling needs from the 4th round onwards. The BPA argument to me is probably mostly concentrated on the first round only, and that's just one pick, and usually I figure the players break down more into grades rather than individualized rankings, for instance, 1-4, 5-10 etc.