Something that isn’t said enough at this time on the NFL calendar, due to the high seriousness with which all 32 teams approach the three days of the draft and all the work that each team puts into it and all the good that each hopes will come out of it, is how much fun the whole endeavor is.
One who knows is Aaron Glenn. The Jets head coach has been a student of the draft in one way or another since the Jets took him 12th overall out of Texas A&M in 1994. It affected him for his 15 playing seasons by providing teammates around which he would perform on the Jets and four other teams. The impact has been even greater from 2012-24, when he was a scout, assistant coach and coordinator.
And now approaching his second draft as Jets head coach, Glenn sounds, well, like a draftnik.
“Draft day, I love that day, I really do, because you just never know what’s going to happen,” Glenn said recently. “You hear all these guys that are going to get drafted in these certain spots and it’s never that, so to me that’s the exciting part of it and I love every part of it. Hell, I was a part of that when I came out. Shoot, I thought I was going to be the sixth pick and I wound up going 12, so that’s how it happens.”
How will it happen next week for the Jets? Not even Glenn nor general manager Darren Mougey knows for sure. But there will be the exciting parts as the Jets decide what they’re going to do with the second and 16th picks of Round 1 on Thursday night in Pittsburgh, and the 33rd and 44th choices on Friday, and even their five Saturday selections.
The Jets’ nine total choices have remained steady since March 11, when they got QB Geno Smith and a seventh-rounder from Las Vegas in exchange for a sixth-rounder. (The Justin Fields trade to Kansas City on March 19 was for a 2027 pick.) If they hold on to all those slots, it will be their most since they drafted 10 players in 2021.
And who will they take with those choices? They’re not saying, of course, although many are saying for them. That they like one of the top edge rushers, Arvell Reese of Ohio State or David Bailey of Texas Tech, at two. That maybe they like Alabama QB Ty Simpson enough to take him if he’s there at 16 or even 33 … or not. That they could put off taking a QB until day three and instead go high for a WR, such as Southern Cal’s Makai Lemon or Arizona State’s Jordyn Tyson.
But one important point, which Mougey made about Simpson’s one season as ‘Bama’s starter, is that a player’s limited college starts could be an issue, but then again perhaps not.