Alabama Football: 2021 NFL Mock Draft 2.0 with trades
By Dakota Cox
The Jets skip an Alabama football receiver and take a QB
2. New York Jets: Zach Wilson, QB, BYU
The Jets have a few options, but they first need to decide what they want to do with Sam Darnold. To be fair, Darnold might still be a great quarterback. However, the Jets need to cut ties before he is owed a lot of money.
With a new coaching staff, the Jets need to rebuild. They have the cap space and draft capital to build an interesting roster, but they don’t need to tie themselves to Darnold. You can get a Day-2 pick in return and add a rotation player. If you do that, you now have to draft a quarterback.
With so much going wrong in New York, you need to swing for the fences. That means drafting Wilson. You can’t rely on a player who used the talent around him because the Jets have no talent on the offensive side of the ball. Wilson was in a similar situation in college, and he let his talent carry the team.
If the Jets don’t draft a quarterback, they might try to trade for Deshaun Watson. That makes sense for New York, but the Texans have not shown any signs of giving up on their franchise quarterback. That trade would likely send Alabama football’s Quinnen Williams to Houston, so the Jets would lose some young cornerstones to solve this problem.
Wilson is a risk due to the level of competition, but he has the traits that a franchise will be looking for.