I’d agree they probably should have focused more attention on it though. They never seem to use second day picks on linemen, just picking up a bunch in round eight (ie UDFAs) and seeing what sticks…usually nothing.

Now they’ve gone the other way, investing a bunch of money in it. I hope this was budgeted for as part of the plan and not purely a reactionary move to last year’s struggles.

Overall we Drafted some solid Players throughout this decade just couldn’t keep half of them

The problem with the Jets clearly isnt drafting talent. Since 2000, the jets have drafted 6 pro bowlers: Ellis, abraham, coles, santana moss, vilma, justin miller-kr. and that doesnt include chad pennington who took the jets to multiple playoffs and won games. Then there are a bunch of other good players who didnt make pro bowls, but were good starters for us: Kareem Mckenzie, bryan thomas, chris baker, D-Rob, Hobson, askew, cotchery,erick coleman,D’brick, eric smith, brad smith and leon washington. Then there are a bunch of players who are clearly future pro bowlers: Nick Mangold, Kerry rhodes, Darrelle Revis, and David Harris. So, if you ask me I think the jets draft great talent. I would even go far enough to say that since 2000, the jets have drafted better talent than 75% of the teams in this league. Our problem is too much of our talent we either trade, or dont re-sign. Abraham, Becht, Lamont Jordan, Kareem McKenzie, D-Rob, Vilma, Santana Moss. I am aware that some of those scenarios worked out for us (trading abraham in essence for Mangold, and Moss was used to get coles back). But we need to keep our good young players, which was shown by re-signing rhodes, but lets make sure we re-sign Revis and Harris as well when the time comes.

I think the Jets draft just fine, their problem has been in retaining that draft talent. We consistently bleed players like Randy Thomas, Kareem McKenzie, Santana Moss, Jason Ferguson, James Farrior. I’m also fairly sure that Vilma will go back to being a stud, while Robertson (when we finally get rid of him) and Victor Hobson will be solid contributers to their new teams.

And of all those players, only Randy Thomas was handed what at the time seemed to be an insane contract. We could have offered competitive and cap friendly contracts to all of those other former Jets, but the team seems to have a problem evaluating their own talent.

I think if we placed players back on the team who originally drafted them, the Jets would have a pretty strong team.

Think of an offensive line of Ferguson, Randy Thomas, Mangold, Moore, McKenzie with Fabini as a backup is pretty solid. We’d have Pennington and Clemens battling it out at QB. Jordan and Washington at RB. Baker and Becht at TE. Coles, Cotchery, Moss at WR.

On defense you’d have a front lone of Robertson, Ferguson, and Ellis. Linebackers of Abraham, Harris, Hobson, Vilma, Thomas and Farrior. A secondary of Revis, Coleman x2, Rhodes and Miller.

The defense probably isn’t any worst than it is today, but the offense, especially the offensive line, would be far better.

The Jets need to keep drafting well, but they also need to properly evaluate their own players and keep the good ones.

I agree with Tommies’ comment as far as giving more credit for finding late round gems.

Similarly, I’d argue for a weighting that rewards teams significantly for finding productive players in the later rounds, but penalizes them for failing to do so in the first two rounds. With the cap as it is, you absolutely must hit on your Day One picks or you won’t survive; it’s the only way to keep enough quality talent on your roster without going into cap hell. A first round bust double penalizes your team, because you’re paying big bucks to a non-productive player, and you have to pay big bucks to someone else to play his position with adequacy (and often, you also waste draft picks in further fortifying the position.)

Finding Kerry Rhodes in the 4th round (or Tom Brady in the 6th) helps your team immensely, because it gives you a quality starter at below-market rates (and with a fairly low opportunity cost of acquisition). But, missing on a Dorian Boose can be monumentally disastrous, because it leads to fixes and refixes and refixes.