New York Jets: Draft Strategy with Maccagnan and Bowles

We don’t often here a lot from the leaders of our respective teams in this period right before the NFL draft. The planning is done behind closed doors, leaving us to debate and speculate until the draft opens. So, when Mike Maccagnan and Todd Bowles held a conference call for season ticket holders, Jets fans got a rare opportunity to quiz the Jets brass, and get a feel for what they are thinking.

Today, I wanted to bring you some of the more interesting quotes from the Jets GM and head coach. First, Mike Maccagnan talked about how he feels, sitting at number six in the draft:

“Sitting at (No.) 6 is a very good spot to be in. It does allow us the potential to move up in the draft because we’re not very far from the first pick. We do think there will be good players available at 6,” he said. “And then the other thing at 6, you’re probably going to have somebody slide through there to that pick where other teams may want to come up and potentially trade up for that pick.”

Maccagnan also talked about if there are ties on the draft board, the Jets may lean toward the position of need:

“You do factor in need at times when say for example you have a lot of players rated in the same area like in terms of grade and value. Sometimes you can use need as sort of your tiebreaker if you want to go in a certain direction,” he said. “But ideally we’re going to stack our board from how we see them from best to worst. When our picks come available, (we’ll) make the determination in principle who is the best player available is at that point of time and ideally take them.”

The Jets may look running back as we all have speculated. Coach Bowles likes the depth of the 2015 class:

It’s a deep running back class this year,” he said. “There are a lot of good runners coming out and there are a lot of three-down backs in the draft.”

Finally, we learn an insight from Mike Maccagnan that is very interesting. The Jets may not go offensive line until later on, if you look at what Mike says here:

“I think historically when you look at teams that are successful, one of the things that they do in the draft is they find value in offensive linemen prospects that they can kind of groom and develop. They don’t have to always be high picks,” he said. “A lot of teams are very successful building good offensive lines through the draft through picks from the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh round and sometimes even college free agents.”

Some good stuff, and certainly food for thought as the Jets prepare to head to Chicago for the draft.

Next: Mock Draft: The Jets Trade Up for Mariota

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