There was an explanation for the delay.
Joe Douglas was patient, but also wanted to see the best quarterbacks personally in the draft before finally deciding his plans on the position. That’s why the Jets waited so long to move Sam Darnold, after quarterbacks Matthew Stafford, Jared Goff and Carson Wentz had been covered prior to the free-agency period.
“I don’t know how every team approaches a quarterback [evaluation], but I always thought it was a golden rule – you never take a quarterback until you stand next to or next to a guy and watch him throw the football, ”Douglas told Sports Illustrated. “None of the top players could come to a BYU game this year. There were no all-star games, no combinations. You could see Mac Jones in the Senior Bowl. But other than that, your only chance was to stand there and watch them throw on a pro day. To me, that’s huge for a quarterback. “
Douglas saw all the best quarterbacks – BYU’s Zach Wilson, Ohio State’s Justin Fields, Alabama’s Mac Jones, and North Dakota State’s Trey Lance – which the Jets can choose from with the second-pick in the draft. (Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence is expected to be voted # 1 by the Jacksonville Jaguars.)
“I got something out of almost every pro day I went to,” said Douglas. “A man like Trey Lance, I thought Trey Lance had a strong arm. I walked out of the state of North Dakota and said, ‘Wow, this guy has better arm talent than I thought on the tape.’ Get a feel for it, watch the ball come out of his hand, you’re there, field level, you see – does the ball fall at all at the end of the throw, accelerate through the man’s hands? idea that you wouldn’t normally see the tape. “
In the end, the Jets traded Darnold to the Panthers for a sixth rounder this year and second-round and fourth-round choices in 2022. They nearly brought him to free agency, the general manager said, but the team was not ready to pull. the trigger.
“It was a strong offer,” said Douglas. ‘We said to them,’ Look, there are still a lot of boxes left to check. And we just don’t feel comfortable, in case something happens to one of the two best guys, we don’t want to get caught up in a bad situation like one of the two guys fails a physical and then we don’t have Sam. So we didn’t do anything. “