HappyDays

Right, so like I said we did not have a Wilson or Gardner caliber of player to be traded.

We didn't have any players at the level of Wilson or Gardner when McBeane came to town. If we had, we wouldn't have traded them either. Those are both franchise cornerstone players at premium positions and the Jets would be crazy not to keep them around for the rebuild.

Just to be clear though, it isn't just Mahomes' statistics that have been down. It's his on-field performance. There's a reason that the other 3 top tier QBs all got into the MVP conversation last year, while the QB of a 15-1 team wasn't even mentioned, and it's not because of Mahomes fatigue. He just very plainly hasn't been playing at that level the past two seasons. And the counterargument seems to be that you can just cancel all of that out because his team has won championships. Which I get but that's not how a neutral evaluator would rank QBs. I'm not aware of anyone that studies film and/or analytics that has Mahomes ranked as the #1 QB solely based on on-field performance over the past 1-2 seasons. At the end of the day it's all splitting hairs, right? Everyone knows the top 4 QBs could turn pretty much any team in the league into a Super Bowl contender. The individual difference between those 4 is not going to be as important as the difference between their respective teams. That's the point of putting QBs into tiers - the tier grouping tells you more about how they impact the team's success than the individual ranking.

You're arguing against your own point here... Having an elite WR helps whatever QB they draft to be their future become the best version of himself. There's no sense in waiting when the WR market is only going to get more expensive.

So if next year they draft a QB what's the plan?

If you take that idea to its logical extreme, you might as well say that no investments are worth making until you have your franchise QB. That of course would be a ridiculous philosophy for a team to take. When you find your franchise QB you want the team around him to already be in good shape. There's nothing to criticize the Jets for with this extension. They signed a great player to a market value deal.

I'm surprised Stroud didn't make that top 10. I think the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction on him. His 2nd year was a step back from his 1st, but people are being a bit too unfair and reactionary. He had horrid pass protection all year and his pass catchers were decimated by injuries. Like if you put Hurts in that situation I don't think it looks any better and for my money it would look significantly worse.

Thank you for sharing this Alpha. Made my day.

If they can get even average LT play from Simmons that would be a substantial improvement, and that more than makes up for fall off at a less important position. But who knows how Simmons will perform? Even elite prospects sometimes don't work out, especially in year one. If he doesn't improve on what they had last year then yeah there's a good chance their OL will be worse.

Yes that is impressive, it ranked 17th in the NFL last year (minimum 50 routes run). As a point of reference Ja'Marr Chase had 2.5 yards per route run. Maybe you're thinking of per target efficiency... This is talking about every single route including ones where the player isn't targeted.

Depends on how quickly Josh Simmons recovers from his knee injury. He was an elite prospect that only fell because of that injury. Early reports from OTAs said he was already working in with the 1s and looked fine. If he can step in and immediately be the answer at LT that automatically makes them better than last year IMO. And then you have Rashee Rice coming back. Good reason to think their offense will be significantly better than it was last year.

The ol' Buddy Nix gambit!

Not overly confident in this but I'll go with DeWayne Carter. He has apparently transformed his body this offseason to be a more natural 1T in our scheme, and that is a spot that has no other obvious candidate behind DaQuan Jones. Fully recovered from injury and fully committed to doing what the team asks him, I could see him having a bigger impact than expected.