New York Jets general manager Joe Douglas knocked it out of the park in the 2022 draft, landing four stars with his first four picks. The Jets changed the direction of the franchise with the additions of Sauce Gardner, Garrett Wilson, Jermaine Johnson, and Breece Hall in that draft, raising the bar for future drafts.
Instead of drafting impact players at positions of immediate need, Douglas changed up his approach in 2023 by drafting the controversial Will McDonald, who was a raw player who played a position that the team was arguably the deepest at.
The 2024 draft saw fans split, as Douglas arguably filled all of the team’s major holes prior to the draft. Instead, there were three schools of thought: draft a wide receiver to maximize the weapons for Rodgers, draft tight end Brock Bowers due to his projection as a “generational talent,” or draft an offensive tackle to build depth and plan for the future.
Douglas chose the tackle, selecting Olu Fashanu who, like McDonald, had no immediate pathway to significant playing time.
Early in the 2024 season, Douglas’s decisions are looking wise
Will McDonald was already expected to take on a bigger role in 2024 after playing just 19% of the defensive snaps last season, however with prized offseason acquisition Haason Reddick embroiled in a contract standoff that has no end in sight, and aforementioned stud edge rusher Jermaine Johnson going on season-ending IR after tearing his Achilles tendon, McDonald has seen a bigger role with a 53% snap share so far this season.
With increased playing time McDonald has responded as well as anyone could have hoped. After a three sack performance in week two, he followed up with a two sack performance in week three to rank second in the NFL with 5.0 sacks, just 0.5 sacks behind former number one overall pick, Aiden Hutchinson.
As for Fashanu, while the Jets dodged a major bullet with starting right tackle Morgan Moses only projecting to be out 2-4 weeks after a scary play where the back of his knee was rolled up on, the rookie will now be called upon earlier than many thought.
With two tackles over 30 years of age, and left tackle Tyron Smith’s extensive injury history, it was likely that Fashanu would get playing time this season, though most probably wouldn’t have predicted it will come this early. The 11th-overall pick will be tested, playing right tackle instead of his natural left tackle position as his first foray into NFL action. Against New England he managed just 14 snaps, so it’s been hard to evaluate him thus far, but he will be one of the keys to victory over the next few weeks.
The process leading to these controversial picks’ playing time does deserve some criticism
The Jets entered the offseason needing two new starting offensive tackles. Smith and Moses were the best bang for the buck, but the injury history for Smith and age concerns for both were red flags. After seeing the offensive line decimated by injuries and talent deficiencies the last few years, drafting a plug and play left tackle even without an immediate pathway to playing time, was a slam dunk.
However, the circumstances leading to McDonald’s rise to prominence were all self-inflicted. Douglas took the deepest unit on the team and turned it into one of the thinnest. First, he refused to extend pass rush specialist extraordinaire, Bryce Huff, who signed a reasonable deal with the Philadelphia Eagles.
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Next was the aforementioned Reddick debacle, which saw him trade away assets for a player who is still holding out for a mega-deal. Lastly, he traded away the Jets most versatile and perhaps most underrated defensive end, John Franklin-Myers, for nothing in a penny-pinching move.
The Jets are lucky to have McDonald to fall back on, but Johnson’s injury now means is McDonald and a bunch of journeymen and undrafted free agents filling out the edge, which again had previously been the deepest unit on the team.
Having foresight is a good thing, and a hallmark of quality organizations and their handling of the NFL draft, however amping up the degree of difficulty via self-inflicted wounds is the opposite of what well run organizations do. No one gives out style points for degree of difficulty, so Douglas is really batting just .500 on his overall process regarding the handling of these two players relative to the rest of the roster. Let’s hope it doesn’t come back to bite him.
