Jets’ Joe Douglas has to get quarterback decision right

Derek Carr was the first man through the door for the Jets’ great quarterback search of 2023, making him the unofficial chief within the clubhouse. Possibly the primary impression he made Friday evening throughout dinner and Saturday throughout his go to will finally separate the launched Raider from the likes of Jimmy Garoppolo and Ryan Tannehill.

Or possibly the presumed frontrunner, Aaron Rodgers, will emerge from his darkness retreat with a burning need to win the massive one for a franchise that has been by itself darkness retreat for the higher a part of 5 many years.

If the 39-year-old Rodgers engineers a commerce from Inexperienced Bay to New York and wins the Jets their first Tremendous Bowl title since January 1969, he’ll erase all of his Packers postseason sins (11-10 profession document, just one ring), make up some legacy floor on seven-time champ Tom Brady and turn into ultra-relevant once more in a league now managed by the a lot youthful Patrick Mahomes.

However irrespective of how this fascinating expertise present performs out, two issues are already sure:

1) Jets normal supervisor Joe Douglas has earned the proper to guage this present.

2) Douglas has completely no selection however to get this one proper.

Up entrance, it must be acknowledged that Jets followers have each motive to doubt the entrance workplace’s capability to determine and purchase a championship quarterback, provided that no membership worker has achieved it since Sonny Werblin signed Joe Namath out of Alabama in 1965 for the blockbuster worth of $427,000.

(Word to all Jets capologists: Rodgers is scheduled to make that sum subsequent season for about each seven minutes of regular-season recreation time.)

Two years in the past, Douglas guess the way forward for the franchise — and, by extension, his personal future — on Zach Wilson, a BYU quarterback who performed with an athletic aptitude and who made a Professional Day throw that might’ve represented his origin story had he, , turn into a franchise participant for the Jets.

Wilson most actually didn’t do this, forcing his employer to successfully ship him to prolonged spring coaching whereas the crew performed video games with out him. Now, the Jets must substitute the No. 2 total decide within the 2021 draft, whereas in some way changing him right into a prepared understudy. Requested if it have been a believable state of affairs that Wilson may beat out the yet-to-be-named veteran quarterback subsequent summer time, head coach Robert Saleh all however laughed.

“I don’t learn about that one,” he replied. “Let’s undergo that course of. You possibly can ask me that one earlier than coaching camp.”

So with Wilson demoted to the second string, in a best-case state of affairs, the query must be requested: Why ought to the chief who drafted Zach be trusted to search out the proper man to exchange Zach?

That’s the place Douglas’ roster constructing and drafting (non-QB division) comes into play. Final spring, the Jets did decide the AP Defensive Rookie of the 12 months in Sauce Gardner, and the AP Offensive Rookie of the 12 months in Garrett Wilson. The school gamers who have been ranked because the second, fourth, ninth and twenty eighth greatest prospects by revered NFL Community analyst Daniel Jeremiah have been landed by Douglas with the fourth, tenth, twenty sixth and thirty sixth total picks.

So the Jets ended up with playmakers all around the subject. That they had a postseason crew with no postseason quarterback, which is why a 7-4 season devolved right into a 7-10 meltdown. After they satisfied many skeptics that they’d lastly established a profitable program, it was a prototypical Identical Outdated Jets end.

The quarterback place is 75 % of the game, and within the drafting of Wilson, Douglas bought it one hundred pc improper. Most normal managers wouldn’t have survived that sort of swing and miss, however Douglas isn’t most normal managers.

He was a invaluable front-office voice in Philadelphia when the 2017 Eagles gained the franchise’s first championship since 1960. He has a shot right here so as to add the proper quarterback to his loaded roster to win the Jets’ first championship in additional than half a century.

Carr is an fascinating choice as an iron-man starter who reached three straight Professional Bowls earlier than delivering 4 straight seasons of at the least 4,000 passing yards. He has by no means gained a playoff recreation, however then once more, Matthew Stafford hadn’t gained any playoff video games for the Lions earlier than he gained the Tremendous Bowl with the Rams.

Garoppolo isn’t as sturdy or as prolific as Carr, however he’s a winner with 4 postseason victories and a Tremendous Bowl look behind him. Tannehill is Tannehill.

Rodgers? He’s a considerably diminished all-time nice a dozen years faraway from his solely journey to the Tremendous Bowl.

It’s an fascinating and eclectic subject of candidates for Douglas to type by way of. He may not get the quarterback he needs above all, particularly if Rodgers chooses to remain in Inexperienced Bay.

However by way of his capability to acknowledge expertise on each side of the ball, Douglas has earned this chance to proper a horrible improper. The go to by Carr simply opened what ought to be a wild offseason for the Jets, with a lot at stake.

Will they fail to discover a Tremendous Bowl quarterback but once more?

Say it ain’t so, Joe.