By Glenn Naughton<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It happens every year around this time.\u00a0 Once football season\u00a0comes to an end, fans turn their attention to the NFL draft.\u00a0 It’s a day that represents a new beginning and reason for hope.\u00a0 Teams\u00a0that suffered through the worst of the worst during the regular season are given the first crack at getting a struggling franchise back on track and\u00a0heading in the right direction.<\/p>\n
It\u00a0seems that\u00a0 no matter the team, no matter the draft slot and no matter prospects, there will always be those fans screaming for their team to “trade down and grab more picks”.\u00a0 It’s an understandable approach for teams who more often than not need multiple players to fill out a roster that’s lacking talent.\u00a0 All too often however, the trade down scenario is\u00a0just a\u00a0pipe dream.\u00a0\u00a0General\u00a0managers place a great deal of value on\u00a0their early round\u00a0selections and will often steer clear of the price tag attached to a first round trade-up.<\/p>\n
If and when it does happen, how often is “your” team going to be\u00a0in the spot that the team looking to move up covets most?\u00a0 How reasonable is the scenario being pitched by the fans and pundits?\u00a0\u00a0There are a lot of moving parts with these deals, but in looking at the\u00a0New York Jets\u00a0who own the sixth overall pick, they may be in the perfect position to move down and acquire multiple picks, while filling their biggest need and adding a quality young quarterback at the same time.<\/p>\n
For months, the number one selection in the draft was expected to be one of two quarterbacks, Marcus Mariota\u00a0out of Oregon or Jameis Winston of Florida State.\u00a0 The thought of either one falling to the Jets at number six would have been laughed at not long ago.\u00a0 However, if you’re willing to put any stock at all into what some draftniks are saying, Mariota may very well be sitting there when the Jets are on the clock.<\/p>\n
Three different experts are now projecting Mariota to the Jets <\/a>at number six while NFL.com analyst Bucky Brooks has him falling<\/a> all the way to the Chiefs at no. 18.\u00a0 While a free-fall like that\u00a0is fairly unlikely, Mariota to the Jets isn’t all that far-fetched.<\/p>\n Of the two players, Winston is considered by many to be the more NFL-ready quarterback, and of course he plays in the state of Florida.\u00a0 That, plus his on-field production has several outlets claiming that Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Lovie Smith would like nothing more than to take Winston <\/a>first overall.<\/p>\n Between\u00a0that top pick and the Jets’ pick at number six, there are four teams who already have what they believe to be their franchise quarterbacks in the Titans, Jaguars, Raiders and Redskins.<\/p>\n Of those teams, the Titans\u00a0and Redskins are\u00a0the wild cards on draft day.\u00a0 Last season the Titans selected quarterback Zach Mettenberger in the sixth round.\u00a0 That’s hardly a\u00a0 huge investment, but it’s believed that the Titans are very happy with what they’ve seen from him thus far and would like to stay with him at this point.\u00a0 With his\u00a0low salary cap charge, the Titans could afford to take Mariota and opt to trade the loser of a head-to-head competition if they’re that high on the Oregon product.\u00a0 A very unlikely scenario, but stranger things have happened.<\/p>\n Both the Jaguars and Raiders selected their franchise quarterbacks last season in Blake Bortles and Derek Carr which makes Mariota to either one of those teams a virtual impossibility.\u00a0 At number five, the Washington Redskins have\u00a0 embattled quarterback Robert Griffin. While there have been rumblings of a Griffin trade<\/a>, it’s believed that owner Daniel Snyder would like to hold on to\u00a0the face of his franchise,\u00a0especially considering what he gave up <\/a>to get him.\u00a0 While Snyder is just the type of owner who might be willing to make a splash and select Mariota, doing so would mean he will have spent four first round picks on two quarterbacks in the last four years…ouch.<\/p>\n Should the Redskins pass, that would leave the\u00a0Jets on the clock with Mariota\u00a0 there for the taking.\u00a0 For any team interested in moving up to take\u00a0Mariota, they would have to realize that the Jets pose the biggest threat in the top six picks to select him.\u00a0 Even if he has some of the physical limitations that make him a system quarterback as some claim, Mariota still represents the Jets best option to fill a decades-old vacancy through the draft.\u00a0 Any effort to make a deal with the Jets would have to be based on a willingness to give up not only draft picks, but a promising young quarterback as well.\u00a0 Hello, Chip Kelly.<\/p>\n When the Philadelphia Eagles made Kelly their head coach two years ago having built one of the most\u00a0high-powered offenses in college football history while\u00a0at Oregon, the hope was that they would get more of the same in the NFL.\u00a0\u00a0 In year one under Kelly and with Foles at quarterback, they didn’t disappoint.\u00a0 The second year quarterback took over for an injured Michael Vick early in the season and went on to post one of the most prolific passing seasons in NFL\u00a0 history.\u00a0 In Kelly’s up-tempo offense, Foles threw a staggering 27 touchdowns in just 13 starts, while tossing only 2 interceptions.\u00a0 Much of this was\u00a0a product of Kelly’s scheme and the unfamiliarity that NFL defenses had in stopping it, but a 27\/2 TD\/INT ratio with a 64% completion percentage is just too good to be written off under any circumstance.<\/p>\n In his other fifteen NFL\u00a0games (7 in 2012 and 8 in 2014) Foles’ numbers aren’t nearly as impressive as his 27\/2, but to hold anyone to that type of standard would be foolish.\u00a0 Minus his\u00a0mind-blowing\u00a0numbers of two years ago, Foles has completed 60% of his passes while throwing 19 touchdowns\u00a0and 15 interceptions.\u00a0\u00a0He hardly lit the world on fire, but for anyone who saw\u00a0his play this season with\u00a0his starting LT suspended, his pro-bowl center missing chunks of time due to\u00a0 injury, and\u00a0a wildly inconsistent\u00a0running game, his production and toughness were what\u00a0 you would hope to get out of a young quarterback with limited experience.<\/p>\n Foles is still young with plenty of room to grow, but he’s not the ideal fit for Kelly’s offense the way Mariota is.\u00a0 It’s also\u00a0no accident that Kelly currently has\u00a0eight of his former Oregon players on\u00a0 his roster.\u00a0 He wants to have his guys run his system, and his guy, the one he recruited to play for him at Oregon might be sitting there for the taking, if he’s willing to pay the price at number six.\u00a0\u00a0It would be foolish to assume Kelly\u00a0wouldn’t at least make a cursory phone call to Mike Maccagnan, especially since he’s been given full control <\/a>over personnel decisions with the Eagles.<\/p>\n Unlike last season when the Jets were armed with a dozen draft picks, they’re likely to\u00a0enter the draft this year with only six selections at their disposal, and plenty of holes to fill. Should the Jets\u00a0deal for\u00a0Foles, there would be plenty of talented players at #20 which is where the Eagles currently sit.\u00a0 So, will this be the season when the pipe dream of hoarding picks\u00a0to build for the future becomes a reality?\u00a0 On April 30th, in Chicago, we’ll all find out.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Glenn Naughton It happens every year around this time.\u00a0 Once football season\u00a0comes to an end, fans turn their attention to the NFL draft.\u00a0 It’s a day that represents a new beginning and reason for hope.\u00a0 Teams\u00a0that suffered through the worst of the worst during the regular season are given the first crack at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":27677,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,1337],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-27726","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-featured-editorials","8":"category-home-slider"},"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Maccagnan.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peLffi-7dc","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27726"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27727,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27726\/revisions\/27727"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}