Gang Green Nation
Well, the season is over. The tank is complete, and after weeks of speculation, the Jets will be picking No. 2 overall.
At No. 2, there are still plenty of questions about what direction they take. If Dante Moore declares, the debate will almost certainly center on whether the Jets go quarterback, trade back, or simply take the best player on the board. That discussion is fairly straightforward and will dominate much of the early draft conversation.
However, there’s another pick the Jets own that isn’t getting nearly the same level of attention.
Thanks to the Colts’ collapse down the stretch and their failure to make the playoffs, the pick they traded to the Jets now lands in the top half of the draft. For a team with holes all over the roster, that’s a massive asset.
We’ll dive much deeper into these prospects as we get closer to April, and it’s important to note that draft boards can change rapidly between January and draft night. But for now, let’s take a brief look at the four most popular players players mocked to the Jets with this pick:
David Bailey:
Bailey immediately emerges as a popular potential target for the Jets.
A four-year senior who began his career at Stanford before transferring to Texas Tech, Bailey has been on draft radars for the better part of the last two years. However, it was his senior season that truly launched his draft stock. After entering the year viewed as more of a mid–second-round prospect, Bailey has climbed to consensus No. 11 overall on most big boards.
The book on Bailey is fairly simple: he’s an elite college pass rusher.
After two solid seasons at Stanford, Bailey took a major leap in his junior year, becoming one of the highest-graded pass rushers in the country. With a larger national stage at Texas Tech, he only continued that ascent, arguably becoming the most dominant pass rusher in college football this past season. With better coverage behind him, his sack total also exploded with 15 sacks this past year.
Bailey is the highest-graded pass rusher in the country on both true pass sets and overall snaps. He leads the nation in PRP—a PFF metric that combines sacks, hits, and hurries relative to pass-rush opportunities—and also ranks first in win rate on true pass sets, measuring how often he beats his blocker on non-penalty pass-rush snaps.
The athletic profile jumps off the page as well. Bailey is fast, explosive, and incredibly productive. He reportedly bench-pressed 405 pounds, squatted 550, and has been clocked at 22.16 mph. There’s a lot to like.
The concerns, however, are also easy to spot.
Bailey is undersized, listed at 250 pounds (a number that appears generous given he doesn’t look much different from the 240 pounds he was listed at during his Stanford days). That size raises legitimate questions about his ability to set the edge, hold up against the run, and rein in some of his more reckless tendencies....
