Gang Green Nation
The Jets need a quarterback. Could Shedeur Sanders fit the bill?
This feels like a weird article to write. On one hand, it seems like a zero percent chance to me that quarterback Shedeur Sanders makes it to pick 7 so why even bother to write an article related to it? On the other hand, some well-respected mock drafters have him falling that far and I’ve even seen some New York Jets fans say that they wouldn’t want him if he was there. So why not discuss what they should do if he goes that far since there seems to be some debate? I mean what else is the offseason for if not for theoretical possibilities?
Let me start by making my stance clear: if Shedeur Sanders makes it to pick #7 then the New York Jets should take him. Now, let me make that stance even more clear (and a bit more colorful for emphasis): if Shedue Sanders makes it to pick $7 then there should be no hesitation and the New York Jets should sprint that card to the podium as fast as head coach Aaron Glenn is able to run.
Simply put, the opportunity to take Sanders at 7 would be a gift to a franchise that woe seems to follow like a shadow, and looking for reasons not to take Sanders would be like looking a gift horse square in the mouth. Why? Well, because the dude can simply sling a football better than just about anyone at the college ranks.
Maybe you thought that I was exaggerating in the last sentence. Based on the data, I am not.
First, we can look at the aggregate of all his “true dropbacks,” which is a filter commonly applied to quarterback stats to control for the scheme that each quarterback plays in. Sanders was as good as it got in 2024 when considering this context.
Next, we can look at his passes when he was able to operate in structure as these are thought to be one of the best predictors of future quarterback success. We can also gather from this tweet that Sanders wasn’t propped up by a very easy to execute system, but rather that he was doing some significant heavy lifting. Long story short, “dude was good.”
After that, we can look at passes against the best competition when they knew he was throwing. Teams knew they had to stop it and it simply didn’t matter. Again, “dude is good.”
Maybe you want a quarterback who can throw the ball even when under pressure. Guess what? Sanders excelled at that too. Say it with me now: “dude is good.”
Last, we can look at it on a route-by-route basis and we can pretty clearly see that there isn’t a route in the playbook that he can’t execute. For the sake of simplicity, in the below chart just default to green arrow is “great,” yellow arrow is “okay,” and red arrow is “bad.” The 2024 chart?...
