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Florham Park, New Jersey – In order to fix a problem, you have to admit you have one.
With their first two picks, the Jets are making a clear admission that their secondary was a huge problem last year.
“We were disappointing last year in the secondary hopefully these guys will make us better.” – Todd Bowles
And their locker room was a huge problem.
The Jets picked safeties Jamal Adams and Marcus Maye with their first two picks.
These are two of the draft’s best safeties and two of the draft’s best leaders.
So potentially they have gone far to fix two of their problems.
Now, it’s true that Mike Maccagnan likes to stick to the value board. They stack the board before the draft in their war room and try to stick to it.
However, if two players are close in value, they lean on need to break the tie.
So that led to these two picks.
The Jets safety play last year was poor.
There were too many blown coverages.
Calvin Pryor had a poor season. He’s too much of a see-and-go reactor. And he’s on the trading block.
Marcus Gilchrist wasn’t as bad, but he’s suffered a serious knee injury and will enter training camp on PUP.
After Gilchrist got hurt, Rontez Miles filled in, and gave up a number of big plays. Miles has the heart of a lion, and is tremendous in run support, and gives you everything he’s got, but his hip stiffness hurts him transitioning with targets in the open field. It’s not his fault. It’s how he’s built. Miles is best served as a special teams ace and occasional box safety.
So the Jets needed safety help – big-time.
And these two draft picks should help.
We talked about Adams yesterday.
As for Maye, he’s almost as good as Adams. He might have been a late first-round consideration if not for a broken arm suffered late last college season. He’s still recovering.
Both Adams and Maye have great instincts, something the Jets need more of in their deep patrol. They also run very well for safeties, covering a lot of ground . . .
As for the Jets third round pick, wide receiver ArDarius Stewart, he’s a very good third round value. Keep in mind, Alabama didn’t get great QB play last season, and he still managed 54 catches and eight touchdowns. With a big-time passing QB, those numbers would have been a lot of higher.
He’s a very physical receiver who runs very good routes, and should be solid on special teams in coverage and as a returner.
The Jets traded out of the late third round, sending the 107th pick to Tampa Bay Buccaneers for four and sixth round picks.
Personally, I would have stayed at the end of the third round and landed an edge rusher like Carl Lawson or Carroll Phillips, but that is just me.
The Jets continue to kick the can down the road on this edge-rusher void which is hard to understand.
April 29, 2017
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