The New York Jets have effectively been on the clock for two months, and it’s unclear if they know what they’re doing on Thursday night. Everyone has known that the Raiders are taking QB Fernando Mendoza with the No. 1 pick since the NFL Scouting Combine in February, which meant the draft effectively starts at No. 2. The issue is that the lead-up to making the pick has been so peppered with so much chaos that it’s impossible to get a bead on what they’re doing.
It might be easy to shrug this off as “smokescreen,” which fans tend to do during a nonsensical draft lead up — but there’s public information showing that the Jets might do something very weird with the No. 2 pick. To being with: A trade seems very unlikely. There is one guy seemingly worth making the jump for and that’s Ohio State’s Arvell Reese, who is the No. 1 player on our big board — and also an ideal player for the Jets.
Head coach Aaron Glenn is moving the Jets to a 3-4 base defense in his sophomore season, which precipitated the team’s trade with the Titans for T’Vondre Sweat. It’s assumed that the Jets will be using a hybrid front, which has become commonplace in the NFL — and nobody is better equipped in this draft for defensive variability than Reese. The ultimate toolbox player, you can throw him on the edge and get pressure, but also move him inside where he’s a reliable enough box linebacker to play Mike or Will in a different alignment.
So what’s the problem? Throughout the process there have been reports out of New York that the Jets were lukewarm on Reese. The organization has no reason to lie about any interest, because they’re in the driver’s seat. In addition, the only way you potentially bait a trade if you aren’t interested in Reese is by feigning interest and getting an offer you can’t refuse, not the other way around. It’s semi-understandable why the Jets have cold feet when it comes to the Ohio State prospect, because he’s not a finished product. There’s work to be done, and his true position isn’t set in stone. That’s worrisome for an organization wanting to compete right now, and doesn’t necessarily have the luxury to spend time developing a player.
The lack of interest in Reese caused people to turn their attention to Texas Tech’s David Bailey, who is the next-most obvious pick for the Jets. His position is set as a 3-4 EDGE, he will come in and get pressures immediately, Bailey will help the Jets right now — but give it three years, and he might end up simply being a Top 10 pass rusher, not a transcendent player the way Reese can. Still, that might be good enough to land a reliable building block that Glenn and Co. can count on.
“Okay, so the pick is going to be David Bailey,” you might say — except for the fact that the Jets cancelled their Top 30 visit with him. It’s definitely not unheard of to see teams take players without Top 30 visits, but not typically in the Top 5. At the very least, an organization is happy to bring in an intended target just to show them the facilities, have them get used to the culture, get a sense of the player away from the distractions of the Pro Day or the Combine.
Now we have two guys who are in play at No. 2, with the Jets giving signals they’re interested in both, and disinterested in equal measure.
If you hope to glean information from their Top 30 visits, good luck. A total of 14 visits were spent on players grading from the 5th round, to UDFAs — including five players who weren’t even ranked on Top 500 prospect boards. The team literally cancelled a visit with David Bailey to accommodate a player who won’t be drafted, resting on their laurels of seeing him at the combine and pro day.
In the simplest terms: The Jets aren’t operating like any other team in the NFL. That could be a sign of genius as they pull something out of this class we didn’t expect, but being different isn’t always a good thing when it comes to the draft. You might think you’re playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers, but it winds up you were playing Hungry, Hungry Hippos all along.
