{"id":39343,"date":"2018-05-12T20:23:50","date_gmt":"2018-05-13T00:23:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jetnation.com\/?p=39343"},"modified":"2018-05-13T06:31:54","modified_gmt":"2018-05-13T10:31:54","slug":"new-york-jets-gang-greens-2016-draft-class-on-verge-of-critical-third-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/2018\/05\/12\/new-york-jets-gang-greens-2016-draft-class-on-verge-of-critical-third-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Gang Green’s 2016 Draft Class on Verge of Pivotal Third Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

They say that a fair analysis of any NFL draft class can’t take place until a group has played their third pro season which means Mike Maccagnan’s second draft class as an NFL GM is about to start their third season.\u00a0 How is it looking so far?<\/p>\n

LB Darron Lee:\u00a0<\/strong>Lee has caught his share of flack from Jets fans for a few different reasons.\u00a0 First of all,\u00a0 he’s not a quarterback, something Jets fans desperately wanted at the time he was chosen.\u00a0 Secondly, he’s slightly undersized for his position, so when opposing offensive linemen lock him up, he has a hard time shedding blocks.\u00a0 Lastly, he’s had some off-field issues<\/strong><\/a> that have raised a few eyebrows.\u00a0 At the end of the day however, Lee has been a solid starter considering his lack of experience at the position and flashed some big play ability last season.\u00a0 Whether or not Lee lives up to his first round billing remains to be seen, but unlike many past first round picks for the Jets, his floor appears to be “quality starter” for the next several seasons.\u00a0 If used properly, he could be a big time play-maker.<\/p>\n

QB Christian Hackenberg:\u00a0<\/strong>At this point in time, it appears the only thing preventing Hackenberg from being the biggest bust in team history is the fact that Eric Mangini spent a first round pick, sixth overall, on Vernon Gholston.<\/p>\n

OLB Jordan Jenkins:\u00a0<\/strong>Jenkins looks to be the second coming of Calvin Pace.\u00a0 He’s a hard-nosed linebacker who will never put up more than a handful of sacks every year, but he’ll be a consistent edge setter who lays the occasional big hit.\u00a0 On top of his on-field performance, you get the felling the Jenkins is an extremely high character player.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

2018 is a big test for Jets cornerback Juston Burris.<\/p><\/div>\n

CB Juston Burris:\u00a0<\/strong>Burris is a fringe player at this point in time.\u00a0 He looked to be a possible contributor during his first training camp when he was consistently breaking up passes.\u00a0 With an expanded role last season, Burris found himself on the bench after a couple of poor performances and was used sparingly down the stretch.\u00a0 This could be a make or break camp for the NC State product.<\/p>\n

RT Brandon Shell:\u00a0<\/strong>Shell got the starting nod late in the season during his rookie year and he’s been the team’s starter since then.\u00a0 Consistency has been an issue, but he has clearly played well enough to show he could be a solid starter for years to come.\u00a0 Excellent value in the 5th round.<\/p>\n

P Lachlan Edwards:\u00a0<\/strong>Edwards struggled as a rookie but had a stellar second season.\u00a0 Clearly the Jets have quite a bit of confidence in Edwards as they’ve done very little to challenge him in training camp.\u00a0 After averaging 40.8 yards per punt as a rookie, Edwards saw that number soar to 46.6 last season.to go along with 33 punts inside the 20 yard line.<\/p>\n

WR Charone Peake:\u00a0<\/strong>Players taken this late in the draft rarely pan out, and Peake is another player who appears to be on the fringe, if not already on the outside looking in.\u00a0 He spent all of last year on injured reserve after playing in just 3 games.\u00a0 If Peake makes the roster in 2018, it will be due largely in part to his outstanding work on special teams as a gunner.<\/p>\n

With year three about to get under way, the current count for the Jets’ 2016 draft stands at seven choices, a minimum of four starting players (Lee, Jenkins, Shell, Edwards), one bust (Hackenberg) and two players who will have an uphill battle in making the 2018 roster (Burris, Peake).<\/p>\n

It could be better, but as Jets fans know, it could be a whole lot worse<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They say that a fair analysis of any NFL draft class can’t take place until a group has played their third pro season which means Mike Maccagnan’s second draft class as an NFL GM is about to start their third season.\u00a0 How is it looking so far? LB Darron Lee:\u00a0Lee has caught his share of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":36384,"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],"tags":[2444,2445,2373,2418,2424,2459],"class_list":{"0":"post-39343","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-featured-editorials","8":"tag-brandon-shell","9":"tag-charone-peake","10":"tag-darron-lee","11":"tag-jordan-jenkins","12":"tag-juston-burris","13":"tag-lachlan-edwards"},"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/IMG_3781.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peLffi-aez","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39343","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=39343"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39347,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39343\/revisions\/39347"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}