Life is pain for fans of the New York Jets. This pain might be expanding to a highly-touted college quarterback (QB) that may potentially declare for the NFL Draft in 2021 – Trevor Lawrence.
The Clemson QB has dominated his college opponents over the last two seasons in Clemson, taking over the offense as a true freshman back in 2018. Since then, Lawrence has led the Tigers to an undefeated season and College Football Playoff (CFB) National Championship victory in 2019. Clemson came close to repeating this feat the following season, but fell short to LSU in the 2020 national championship.
At time of writing, Lawrence is 30-1 in his college career, and will likely be the first overall selection in the draft either in 2021 or 2022. The Jets will almost certainly hold the first overall pick in 2021 and maybe even 2022 if Lawrence decides to stay in college.
The Jets as an organization are the polar opposite of Lawrence in terms of success. While Lawrence is a perennial winner wherever he goes, the Jets have been a perennial loser ever since their last playoff berth 2011. Even then, you’d have to go all the way back to Super Bowl 3 in 1969 to find the last time the Jets had any significant success (outside of 2010 & 2011).
This season, the Jets so far are 0-7 and are far and away the worst team in professional football. The Jets lost their only solid defensive player, superstar safety Jamal Adams, this previous offseason and just recently cut ties with former superstar running back (RB) Le’Veon Bell this season.
The team has all but officially declared 2020 a tank season, as they have gotten rid of nearly every player that stood in the way of them losing, save for QB Sam Darnold and wide receiver (WR) Jamison Crowder. The long overdue firing of current head coach Adam Gase has yet to happen, despite pleas from not only Jets fans, but the rest of the league to get rid of this guy.
With the odds of the Jets getting the first overall pick and the team’s overall dysfunction, what do you do if your Lawrence? Do you declare for the 2021 draft while your draft stock is at its highest? Or do you wait another year, hoping someone else will have the first pick in 2022 at the risk of injury or poor performance harming your draft stock?
Either way, barring a major injury or massive drop off in production, I think Lawrence will be a top pick in either year. If he stays at Clemson another year, they’re likely to contend for another national championship – an option I’d find appealing if I were Lawrence. But there’s always a risk when you return for your senior season. An injury, especially a devastating one, can severely harm your draft stock and result in the loss of potentially millions of dollars.
For example, current Miami Dolphins QB Tua Tagovailoa won a national championship with Alabama in 2018 and was projected to potentially be the first overall selection in the 2020 draft. However, Tua suffered a major hip injury that harmed his draft stock and left his future in football uncertain. The emergence of QB Joe Burrow that same year didn’t help. Despite this, Tua was still picked in the first round. Similarly, if this did unfortunately happen to Lawrence, I think he’d be a lock for the first round still. So, there’s not a ton of risk if he decides to play out his senior season.
On the other hand, he can go ahead and forgo his senior season and get an early start on his professional career while the iron’s hot. Unfortunately, he’ll have the difficult task of turning around the hapless Jets, which, at this time, might be an impossible task so long as management doesn’t change course.
The question I’d like to pose to the Jets is “why?” If you’re the Jets, why take a quarterback first overall when you have Darnold and the rest of your team needs improvement? Granted, I have no doubt that Lawrence would be better than Darnold, but I’d like to stress that Darnold isn’t the problem in New York. The organization’s front office, who has stripped the roster bare and still insists on keeping Gase around, is responsible for the Jets being a dumpster fire. Darnold is just working with what he has, and it isn’t much.
Darnold has nothing to work with (except Crowder). He has a below average offensive line that ranks at 19th overall after Week 7, according to Football Outsiders. Other than Crowder, he has no other solid receivers to throw to, and since Bell left, nobody decent to hand the ball off to either. In addition, their defense ranks 24th in efficiency after Week 7, according to Football Outsiders.
Looking at it through management’s perspective, dealing away Darnold and holding onto Gase makes perfect sense. Darnold still has some value that can bring back some draft capital. Holding onto Gase all but ensures that the Jets will finish dead last in the league.
Lawrence has a tough decision ahead of him. Personally, I wouldn’t mind staying an extra year in a very successful college football program. But the whole point of the NFL Draft is to help bad teams improve, and somebody has to help the Jets.
