Way too much for 3 players?
 

If you think about it, this trade has basically been us giving up:

2nd Round Pick
4th Round Pick
7th Round Pick
Abram Elam
Brett Ratliff

To Get:
Mark Sanchez
Shonn Greene




If we stayed where we were in each round we could have drafted:
Round 1: Jeremy Maclin
Round 2: LeSean McCoy
Round 3: Jared Cook
Round 4: Louis Murphy
Round 6 and 7: We could have looked for a defensive pass rusher

I would take that group up there combined over Sanchez and Greene

I wouldn't even be kind of happy with the draft you just mentioned.

That kind of draft would have addressed our offensive needs with 2 dynamic receivers, a good running back and a good Tight End.

Our real draft only addressed a good QB and good RB

I don't think I would have been happy with McCoy, Cook, or Murphy given the Jets drafting Maclin.

As much as I would have prefered a WR, or seeing if Greene would fall to the Jets at 76, he's a better fit than McCoy.

Greene complements Leon. McCoy supplants him. The same is true with Cook and Keller.

Perfectly said. A preferable draft, IMO, in that scenario would have been:

Maclin
Greene
Louis Vasquez
Sammie Lee/Anthony Hill, take your pick there

Really just presume you gave up those 3 backups and anybody you would have taken in round 1, 3, or 4 (and then 7), for Sanchez. Based on how high he must have been on our board, we probably would have taken Greene at 52 anyway so that's more or less a watch. So we basically gave up our third, fourth, seventh and those three guys to move up from 17 to 5 for the chance to draft a franchise QB. And time will tell if it was worth it, because if Sanchez ends our QB issues it certainly will have been. It's a lot in number, but not a ton of value to move up that far.

It's really ridiculious. I mean you'd think as much as they must like Sanchez to give an arm and a leg to a team who wanted to fall as far as they could since they were drafting a center (Browns) would have some sense to realize we have no one what so ever outside of Cotchery at WR. I don't personally like Freeman but we could have got him at 17 and got the receiver from Georgia(know his name but not going to try to spell it) Yeah passing up on Ramses Barden, Louis Murphy, and Juaquin Iglesias for a Shonn Greene when we desperately need WRs was real smart guys. Bout as smart as trading a 3rd rounder, a 4th, and a 7th round pick to move up 10 spots in the 3rd round....oh wait the Jets did that too. I don't know who was ahead of this draft but they blew it big and when Mr. "One year wonder" busts next year everyone can thank him for passing up on a WR. I don't know how long they think they can keep their passing game going with everyone at receiver a 5th to 7th round draft pick. Once again the Jets make dumb picks and if Sanchez busts they won't have Ratliff or Clemens next time. I hope Clemens demands a trade this is the 3rd time with the 3rd QB that NY has **** blocked him and its b/s. It's going to be a lot different in the pros without receivers than at USC where he had the best at every position and played only 3-4 tough games.

Do you watch Big 10 football??? Did you see Green roll over Penn state, Wisconsin and have 100+ yards against all the big 10 defenses this year?? I'm going to assume no, becuase if you did you would realize he's more than a one year wonder.

Secondly, there is a reason that Tanny, Rex, Clinksales and company traded up and got him. Green was the #1 player left on the board for us by far, according to Rex on espn this morning.

How can you advocate for a player when you don't even know his name?? That seems a tad odd no?? You're getting mad that we drafted a player that you don't know about, instead of another player you don't know about?? You would have to imagine the guys who get paid to analyze players have done their do-diligence.

We've traded up 3 times so far with Tanny drafting and they all have panned out quite well so far; Revis, Harris and Keller.


Just as you hate on Green and possibly sanchez, what makes you so certain Barden, Louis Murphy, and Juaquin Iglesias would have done anything either??

I can't believe you actually read that.

Who was Flacco throwing too last season? Anyone better than Cotchery?
Who was Chad throwing to while his team (ugh) won a division (ugh).
Was Eli throwing to number one receivers all season?

This system seems to work:

3 serviceable running backs = Check
A good o-line = Check
A good defense = Check?

We were told the Jets will be a run first team anyway.

The OP's draft doesn't have Mark Sanchez.

I have an issue calling a 4th round WR "dynamic". I like him and he has potential but lets not call him dynamic yet. If Sanchez becomes a franchise QB then it was worth it, if not then we blew it. This could either make us a perennial playoff team and Super Bowl contender or could set us back 5 years and get Mr. T fired. Only time will tell.

I was happy with the first trade however, the second one really disappointed me. I really wanted to see more picks from the Jets on day 2. But beyond my selfish reasons, I think that Green is a good running back, but not sure if hes worth giving up all the picks that we did. Even though there are examples of guys that have done well without great receivers, clearly it is preferable for a qb to have more weapons.

I'm not too worried about the argument that we will not have depth because we keep giving up draft picks. I think that if you scout well, it doesn't matter whether someone is a day 2 pick or undrafted, you will find talent.

Agreed. I think you could look at some of the guys that we signed as UDFA's and view them as draft picks. We tend to reach for guys on day two anyway. Potter, Cook, Southerland, Link, Myers, and Westerman were all easily draftable prospects, and we could use help at basically all of those positions except probably where Westerman is going to play. Davie and Conley can also make marks on this team as a blocking tight end and a punter respectively.

We've got a lot of good rookies coming in, they just weren't all guys that we drafted. If these guys show some things and make an impact on this team, it really takes away the sting of having so few picks.

I would not have been shocked to see us draft a guy like Potter in round 4 or 6 if we had picks there. Southerland could have been somebody we looked at in round 6 or 7, we draft tackles like Link late all the time, and we draft players that only project to one or two things like Davie late as well. Remember Jason Pociask in round 5? After trading Elam, Cook could have gotten a look in round 6 or 7, and same with Westerman if we really like him.

Each of these guys has a chance to make the team, and they don't have the pressure of being draft picks. They'll all be fan favorites in training camp and during the season if they make the team. I know I'll be rooting for each and every one of our undrafted free agents, and there are enough open roster spots that these guys can make the same noise that a guy drafted in the late rounds would. It would also be pretty sweet if Conley ends up being our starting punter, or Bullock ends up being a surprise as a tight end.

At the very least, we have picked up some good athletes who can help out on special teams. I will say I agree with you on Westerman not really filling a need. However, Im going to go one step further. Not only do I think his position is not needed, I don't really understand where he fits in the defense at all. He's not an overly athletic guy that can become a linebacker and doesn't have the size to be a DE. I like the guy a lot and he probably would have been drafted if not for the injury, but he doesn't seem like he makes sense in a 3-4.

More generally, I'm just wondering if this strategy may prove to be effective to an extent that other teams will adopt it. Over the years, team have followed the Patriots way of trading down and picking up more late round picks to get steals/depth. Perhaps team will be aggressive and trade up for guys they want and have smaller draft classes because they recognize that they can pick up guys they want after the draft.

We'll see if other teams adopt the strategy. More or less, this strategy will either make Tannenbaum a genius and other teams will copycat the strategy, or it will be the strategy that gets him fired. I do think the success of the UDFA's that we bring in will be a major factor in the success of giving up our picks to get a few guys. The success of the players that we give up so much to go get will also be a very big factor as well. That we're willing to give up so much to go get certain players shows a lot of confidence in pre-draft evaluations and how good a job the scouting department is doing.

I think another aspect of the strategy is signing lower level players to fill roles that a younger guy would generally fill. Most teams use free agency and trades to get established NFL players and then develop younger players behind them that they use later round picks to acquire. It seems like the strategy of this team is to target a few players in the draft, and go get them: Revis, Keller, Harris, Sanchez, Greene, etc. Have them be studs, and take the place of a few free agents that you might acquire. Then fill out the roster with guys like Howard Green, Donald Strickland, and Marques Douglas. That allows the backups to be more experienced. But finding the right backups, picking up the right guys after the draft, and obviously choosing the right guys to go and get, are all very key for this strategy to work. And we'll see if it does.

I will disagree to this extent. In a lot of cases, there just isn't that NFL caliber talent in the UDFA crop. Even when teams find a gem, they find at most 1. Pittsburgh found Willie Parker in 2003 as a UDFA, but thats all they found. When Dallas got Tony Romo as a UDFA, but who else did they get as UDFA's that year? If the Jets are relying on a UDFA class like that, they're in a lot of trouble.

I still think we're going to be finding low-priced veterans to fill the role on the team that 5th, 6th, 7th round guys would have. They're proven, and you end up cutting half of the later round guys anyway. Point taken though, it's absolutely tough to rely on a UDFA class even if you probably would have drafted some of those guys if you had the picks.

At this point there's really nothing left to do than to see if this strategy works, but I absolutely agree that depth is an issue right now. The one thing I do think, though, is that there are other ways to find depth than late-round picks. And those guys generally end up being more proven players. I think, provided our rookies don't cost too much, we're going to be raiding the waiver wire throughout the rest of the offseason to help the depth. Rotoworld said the Giants are going to be cutting some early 30's backup swing G/C guy soon, wouldn't be shocked if we start giving guys like that looks.

The one other thing this method does help is to prevent reaches. I'd bet that given we had over three full rounds between our second and third picks, we had Slauson rated higher than a sixth rounder. We may have considered him in the fourth, fifth round. So it does end up pushing things back.

I don't have any statistics, but 5th-7th rounders don't often pan out, and even when they do it is often as backups/special teams guys. My point was that the talent pool in the late rounds isn't so much better than the pool of undrafted guys many years. There are always a ton of guys that inexplicably fall out of the draft altogether.

There are, but very few of them amount to anything in the NFL. And I don't know of any team that has gotten more than 1 good player out of any single UDFA class.

It was not that long ago that I wanted the Jets to get Ernest Shazor, James Butler, Michael Munoz, Jason White, Justin Jenkins, James Newson and a whole host of others. But only two of them are in the NFL, one has actually done anything (Butler) and he wasn't mediocre at best.

Chansi Stuckey,Harry Williams, Titus Adams, Rashad Washington, Dave Yovanovitis, Matt Walters, Jacob Bender,Jason Posciak, Drew Coleman, Joel Dressen, (went to copy paste at this point)Cavka, Marko. McClover, Darrell ,Johnson, Trevor ,Ward, Derrick, Pagel, Derek ,Walters, Matt Bollinger, Brooks. In that list Stuckey has a shot, Ward is good with another team, Drew Coleman is decent, and Brooks Bollinger is the best qb of all time but not given a chance. 6th and 7th round picks don't work out on ant consistent basis as Im sure you know. Im just saying that listing players that didn't work out and saying only 1 udfa works out a year is a bit ridiculous.
Most undrafted guys don't get a shot because teams have drafted guys that they look at for their limited roster spots first. I think it is conceivable that with more roster spots and more opportunity, we can find more undrafted steals than is typical.

There's no reason for me to think that UDFA's get any less of a shot than players drafted rounds 5-7, but succeed on the NFL much less frequently.

As far as the typical number of undrafted steals, the typical range is 0-1.

Damn, I remember liking a lot of those 6th and 7th round guys a lot. Harry Williams in particular. And Jason Pociask was actually a 5th, picks like that make me alright with signing Andrew Davie as a UDFA.

I will agree that the 6th and 7th round picks of the world aren't going to do you much more good than UDFA's. But generally we're dealing the round 3-5 picks with a lot of frequency as well. Now you can miss on those, but you can hit on them as well and we have done that in the past quite often. It's nice that we're hitting more consistently in the second round, or getting good players in the late first via trade up.

But those are the guys I think we really miss being able to draft. We've selected 3 in the past two drafts where we should have selected 6: Greene, Lowery, and Ainge. Puts a lot of pressure on us to make sure all of those guys hit, and it hasn't been happening. I guess less early-round busts recently has been nice, but these guys help too.

I see little to no difference between a 6th or 7th rounder and a UDFA. Those guys should have an equal shot of making the team. But the 3rd, 4th, 5th rounders almost always make the team and play a role in some capacity.

I think after the 4th it doesn't matter a ton, but it's going to be a problem if we only take two guys on the first day (the old first day) every year, even if they both pan out. What we need to do is lay off FA a little bit for once.

I disagree. I'll agree with the 2nd day trade, as it seems we gave up a fair bit in a relative type way. However, if he works out then i'm all for it. The Sanchez trade was worth it, no question in my mind. Boom or bust. You need to try to get a franchise QB. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. My only regret is last year having Favre instead of having Kellen get a shot. Justin Mac may have hurt his chances with the Jets to a degree of no repair.

I agree with you about last year with the whole Favre situation. I told all of my friends who are Jets fans last year that Favre will put us in a bad situation this year. I said that Favre will retire, which he did. Then we wont, know what we have in Clemens, which is true. I thought Clemens looked good 2 years ago but Macariens pretty much screwd him.

Now if Sanchez lives up to the hype, then that goes out the window. But if Sanchez busts and Clemens goes somewhere else and turns out good, then the Jets have to second guess themselves. Just my opinion but sounds pretty logical.