Joe Douglas didn’t take the Sam Darnold trade lightly, and the Jets GM acknowledged how difficult it was telling the quarterback that he had been traded to the Panthers.
“[T]he swallow-hard moment for me was just making that call to Sam,” Douglas told SI’s Albert Breer. “You know how much work and dedication he’s put in the last three years here, how many rough situations he’s been through, and never wavered with his confidence. Still, when we had the call, I know in his heart of hearts that he feels he was the right guy to turn this franchise around. I just have so much admiration for how he carries himself.”
During the interview with Breer, Douglas revealed that the front office took their time determining how to proceed at quarterback. While the team would have normally completed their scouting much earlier in the offseason, they didn’t get a chance to see the top quarterback prospects in person until late March. Eventually, the organization decided that they’d feel comfortable taking a signal-caller with the No. 2 pick.
“I don’t know how every team approaches a quarterback [evaluation], but I’ve always thought it was a golden rule—you don’t ever take a quarterback until you stand near or next to a guy and watch him throw the football,” Douglas said. “None of the top brass were able to get out to a BYU game this year. There were no all-star games, no combine. You could see Mac Jones at the Senior Bowl. But other than that, your only opportunity to stand there and watch them throw was at a pro day.”
We explored some of the GM’s other soundbites earlier tonight, including the fact that the Jets had a competitive offer for Darnold earlier in the offseason.
Some more notes out of New York:
- Joseph Person and Connor Hughes of The Athletic provided a detailed timeline of the Darnold trade, dating back to Jets season-ending loss to the Patriots in early January. Among the notable revelations from the article was the fact that the Panthers starting offer for the quarterback was a fourth-round pick, while the Jets were initially requesting a first-rounder (even if it was conditional). Douglas considered holding out until after the draft in pursuit of that first, but he ultimately decided to avoid the risk of the Panthers pivoting to a rookie or another veteran quarterback.
- BYU quarterback Zach Wilson is the favorite to be selected second overall by the Jets. Wilson underwent shoulder surgery back in 2019, but NFL.com’s Ian Rapoport tweets that the team continues to have no concern about the shoulder, especially after they got positive news from a recent physical. Based on advice from “trusted medical sources,” the organization has “zero issues about Wilson’s shoulder,” per RapSheet.
- The 2020 sixth-round pick that the Panthers sent to the Jets in the Darnold trade is a compensatory selection, according to ESPN’s Rich Cimini (on Twitter). That pick comes in at No. 226 overall.
- We learned earlier tonight that the Jets re-signed cornerback Bennett Jackson. The 2014 sixth-rounder didn’t appear in a regular season game until the 2019 season, when he appeared in six games with the Jets and Ravens. He appeared in four games this past season for New York, collecting a single tackle.
