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Jets GM is being pulled in three different directions in the first round of the NFL draft

Originally posted on A to Z Sports | By Mike Antoniou | Last updated 4/20/24

What does Joe Douglas want? Want does Joe Douglas need? And what is his core telling him to do? Three questions that will be answered on draft night when the Jets are on the clock at pick No. 10.

NFL Draft expert Todd McShay and Jets GM Joe Douglas are friends. They have been since they both went to college at Richmond and remained close as their lives both intertwined with football in the years to follow.

Now, that doesn’t mean that Joe calls up Todd and says “Hey, we are going to take this guy, don’t tell anyone even though you are in the media.” But it does mean that Todd knows how his friend thinks. He knows the things he covets in a football player and a team. Call it as much of an insight into Joe Douglas’ thinking as we are going to get outside of the building.

So, when Todd McShay joined the God Bless Football podcast with a couple of Jets fans as hosts, you knew the questions about the Jets were going to come.

Todd thinks if you want any insight into what the Jets are planning to do, you need to look at where Joe Douglas came from. “If you work for Ozzie Newsome for a long time, you have no choice but to understand and appreciate what made the Ravens so successful for so long Super Bowls consistently a playoff team,” McShay says about Joe Douglas. “And part of that is, I know it's a cliche but trusting your board that when we set it, ‘these are the best players, we're not going to steer away, we're not going to go reaching for positional value, or for positional need’. But more importantly, if you go back and study Ozzie’s history, where they were most successful, its sitting back and being patient and waiting for that team behind them to panic, and to call them on the clock and to take advantage and basically exploit that team that needed something. “

With the Jets being in the market for a pass protector as well as a pass catcher, Todd thinks Joe Douglas is being pulled in multiple directions with the No. 10 pick, with one direction being to take an offensive lineman with the selection.

“Watch the Jets this year. It's fascinating to me, because now Joe is kind of pulled in three different directions. You got Aaron Rodgers. And you know, you got to protect him at his age coming off of that injury. And yes, we got a couple of band aids in their early mid 30s. An offensive tackle. But what happens in week 14, when one or both those guys are out? If we don't have a plan for that our seasons to [explative], right? Okay, so now that if I'm Joe, that's tugging at me, I can bring in a tackle, and I can give him a little time, whether it's 10 weeks, 13 weeks, but at some point, I'm going to need that offensive tackle.”

Another route the Jets and Joe Douglas can go, is finding another pass catcher for Aaron Rodgers. And then there’s a third route that Todd seems to think is built into Joe Douglas’ DNA.

“But then you've got Joe's foundation, what he was built on. It's like when you leave your house and all the morals and things that have been instilled in you and your parents tell you ‘these are the things that you're like that make you our son’. That's going to be talking because they don't have a second-round pick. And it's all about acquiring extra picks, trusting that we evaluate players better than everyone else evaluates players. That if we can get more picks, we're gonna hit on guys.”

The idea of trusting your draft board and your evaluations so much is a fascinating one because it would allow the Jets to solve two problems with one draft.

“So, now it's like I got to protect Aaron, on one hand, the other hand saying I gotta get another weapon. But his core is telling him that if I move back, I can still get our tackle in the first round, maybe pick 14,15,16. So to a team that's panicking to come up for one of these receivers, let's get our tackle back there and I can get a receiver like a [Florida wide receiver] Rickie Pearsall in the second round because I recovered that second-round pick and now I've handled both issues. And I've done what Ozzie always told me my whole life. So it's going to be fascinating to see what he does.”

The problem for the Jets is they have missed a lot more than they have hit on players in the draft. For every Sauce Gardner and Garrett Wilson, is a Mekhi Becton or Zach Wilson. This is crunch-time for Joe Douglas and Robert Saleh. If things don’t work out this year, there will not be another bite at the apple. The Jets will likely be looking for a new GM and head coach next offseason.

That won’t stop Woody Johnson from interfering with this year’s draft though. As McShay pointed out, “but also, you gotta keep in mind ownership is undefeated.” If Saleh wants player A, Joe wants player B and Woody wants player Z, you might as well order a “player Z” jersey now.

This article first appeared on A to Z Sports and was syndicated with permission.

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