GM Joe Douglas: Jets have ‘great flexibility’ with the 10th pick in this year’s NFL Draft
Tight end? Offensive line? Wide receiver? Heck, even a quarterback?
The Jets have been connected to numerous different players at numerous different positions by experts at the 10th overall pick over the past few months in their latest mock drafts.
With the depth GM Joe Douglas has built this offseason, Gang Green certainly can afford to take the best player available approach when it find itself on the clock during next week’s draft.
Speaking at his pre-draft news conference on Friday morning, the GM says the organization is well aware of that possibility and they’re looking forward to seeing how the draft board falls.
“We feel prepared,” Douglas said. “We’ve talked through some interesting scenarios and a lot of good players. I feel like with the moves we’ve made we’re really in a really good position where we’re sitting at 10 and there’s great flexibility there for us.
“If four quarterbacks go ahead of us, we’re going to have some decisions to make at 10. We’re going to be prepared if our phone is ringing, but it’s a great opportunity to take the best player available like it is every year.”
One of the top players connected to New York of late has been Georgia Bulldogs star tight end Brock Bowers, who has taken home the John Mackey Award as the nation’s top TE each of the past two seasons.
While Douglas did make a point of saying he loves the team’s tight-end room as currently constructed, he certainly sounds open to the idea of selecting a “Swiss Army knife” type of weapon such as Bowers.
“If that tight end can turn into someone that’s something like Kansas City, San Francisco, or what Sam Laporta did last year in Detroit those are real dynamic weapons for your offense and guys that put a lot of stress on the defense and create mismatches.
“It’s hard to put a linebacker on one of those guys. If you put a DB on one of them it creates a size mismatch. If you put a safety on one of them, he better be able to run and play man coverage. So I think the right type of tight end could be a real weapon.”
Despite having the quarterback room solidified with future Hall of Famer Aaron Rodgers healthy, and a veteran backup in Tyrod Taylor, Douglas also sounds open to the possibility of adding one to the mix in the middle rounds.
“It’s the most important position in sports,” he said. “For us, I went back and looked at how we have handled the quarterback positions in drafts, and I looked at how the Packers handled the ‘90s and they were a quarterback farm when Brett Favre was there.
“I would love to be a quarterback factory like that. I would love to have quarterbacks that we take every year in the draft, even if you hit on two or three like the Packers did, you can really turn those into future picks, or they can develop into starters elsewhere.”
