The Jets stunned the Rams 23-20 Sunday in Los Angeles to take their first win of the season. Here are some thoughts and observations from the game:
1. Jet fans are miserable this morning when their dreams of Trevor Lawrence took a severe, perhaps fatal blow on Sunday. I get it. This victory isn’t good for the Jets’ long-term future, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that all hope is lost. You have to use some perspective here, which is hard to come by in our Twitter, talk radio world.
Let’s start here: Everyone says Lawrence is a “quarterback for generations.” I think this is a misnomer. Lawrence is a great quarterback in college and looks like he will do great in the NFL. That makes it a low-risk design choice along the lines of John Elway, Peyton Manning and Andrew Luck – the three names with which he is most closely associated in the “generation” category. But there are plenty of quarterbacks who didn’t get this label who have become great NFL quarterbacks.
Isn’t Patrick Mahomes a “generation” quarterback? Dan Marino was called up after Elway and went to the Hall of Fame. Manning was great, but Tom Brady won more championships and he was a pick in the sixth round.
So yes, the Jets’ path to relevance would be smoother with Lawrence. That is not debatable. But it also doesn’t mean they can’t get there with another quarterback. Justin Fields might be great too. Look at recent quarterback drafts. The best rookie quarterback this season was Justin Herbert, who was picked by the Chargers at number 6, after Joe Burrow and Tua Tagovailoa. Josh Allen (7th overall) and Lamar Jackson (32nd) outperformed Baker Mayfield (1st) and Sam Darnold (3rd) from the Concept classes of 2018. In 2017 Mahomes and Deshaun Watson 10 were takenth and 12th, respectively, and after Mitch Trubisky. The best quarterback made in 2016 was not Jared Goff or Carson Wentz. It was Dak Prescott, taken in the fourth round.
Concept evaluation by the media is nice. Mock tour is fun. But it is not science. Just because everyone assumes Lawrence will get much better than any other quarterback in this draft doesn’t matter and it doesn’t mean other quarterbacks aren’t going to be successful, maybe even more so than Lawrence.
2. If the Jets finish second, GM Joe Douglas now has a choice to make. Is Darnold worth keeping up with Fields or any of the other quarterbacks? If it was a question from Lawrence or Darnold, the answer was simple. This is a bit trickier. Darnold’s performance on Sunday has no influence on this. We’ve seen Darnold play like this before. We know what Darnold is at this point. My feeling about Darnold: you can win with him, but you won’t win thanks to him.
An argument can be made that Douglas should use that No. 2 pick as a trading bait to go down and acquire more choices to build the team around Darnold. I still lean towards drafting a quarterback. One game hasn’t changed my view that Darnold and the Jets both need a fresh start.
There is also a financial component to this. Darnold will enter the final year of his rookie deal in 2021 (assuming they don’t pick up his 2022 option in May). The Jets will soon have to pay him. Drafting a quarterback will restart the clock when you need to give the quarterback the big payday.
Douglas and his staff must find out if there is any other quarterback in this draft than Lawrence who they think will be a good NFL quarterback. If they do, drafting him should be an easy call.
3. There have been two Jets universes for a while and the two collided on Sunday.
There is the universe within the team – specifically the players and coaches. They’ve worked all season to get a win. They don’t care about the draft. Most won’t even be there by 2021.
Then there are the fans. The fans who tolerated (even enjoyed?) This miserable season because they knew it would lead to Lawrence. Now that dream seems dead.
There is a lot of back and forth as to whether fans rooting against their team are good or not. I don’t like telling fans how to root. I can see why any fan would hope for the # 1 pick instead of going 1-15 or 2-14. I also understand why that concept seems strange to players and coaches who use a
Both universes can co-exist. For most of the season, the fans were happy, and the team was not. The tables were turned on Sunday.
4. One outcome of Sunday’s game that should encourage Jets fans about the future is that the Jets got excellent play from two young players who have established themselves as building blocks for this team. Mekhi Becton and Quinnen Williams both dominated the line of scrimmage. Becton is a force and looking good to become an All-Pro left tackle. He can take people off the line and he also gets to the second level and makes people flat. Williams was disruptive, bagging his seventh bag of the season, and the Jets’ defense looked very different after suffering a concussion.
Revealing stat
The Jets are the second team in NFL history to be 0-13 or worse, beating a team with nine or more wins, according to NFL research. The only other time came in 1962 when the 0-13 Raiders defeated the 9-3-1 Patriots in the last game of the season.
Surprising number of snapshots
Arthur Maulet played all 59 defensive snaps in complete safety and replaced Matthias Farley in the starting line-up. Maulet is a cornerback by trade, but has been playing on safety for the past few weeks after the Jets sustained several injuries there. Maulet getting the runway was a surprise.
Match ball
The Jets’ offensive line gets this one. They did a great job against a hard Rams front. The Rams only had two sacks and two quarterback hits in the game. The line got a push on the final drive to keep the ball and clock moving. The line of the Jets took a lot of photos this year, but they showed up on Sunday.