Sam Darnold (!) may be the most important man of the 2021 offseason
Plus, a father-son Super Bowl celebration and the Super Bowl of NFL lawsuits.
The Jets have big decisions to make. The rest of the league is waiting on them.
Barring a major upset, there will be no drama at the top of this year’s NFL Draft. Trevor Lawrence will be the No. 1 pick. The Jaguars will get their franchise quarterback and one of the top prospects to enter the league this millennium.
(Of course, Jacksonville can always surprise us with their own awful judgment. The 30-hour tenure of strength coach Chris Doyle is proof.)
Once Lawrence holds up his teal jersey and fist bumps Roger Goodell is when the offseason gets interesting. The fate of the No. 2 selection -- and the possible keystone to a crumbling arch of quarterbacks -- lies in the prototypical quarterback frame of Sam Darnold.
The Jets have spent this offseason restarting a cycle of hope that always ends the same exact way as a prison flight full of convicts and a Southern-accented Nicolas Cage. Firing Adam Gase, a bucket of dirty mop water given sentience by a very drunk wizard, was a great start. Hiring 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh was the obvious first step toward rebuilding the optimism the franchise will eventually flush away like an infection. Step two will be coming to a decision about the team’s quarterback.
Darnold is under contract for $9.7 million next season, which is a fair chunk of money but below the league wide average for starting QBs. New York will have until May to choose whether or not to enact a fifth-year option that would boost his salary to more than $20 million but only be guaranteed in case of injury. Or, maybe some other team will make that decision, because there appears to be a small but meaningful trade market for his services this spring.
Whatever the Jets decide, they’ll be the catalyst that starts an epic starting quarterback carousel spinning in 2021 and well into the future. Keeping Darnold will mean the No. 2 pick will be extremely available for a high-value trade involving whichever team is intent on making Zach Wilson, Justin Fields, or, what the hell, Mac Jones their next great passer. Dealing him means he’s someone else’s starter for 2021 and would make someone else’s borderline starter available for a swap. Draft fortunes and the fates of available veterans like Ryan Fitzpatrick, Cam Newton, Mitchell Trubisky, Jameis Winston, and maybe even Dak Prescott, Derek Carr, Carson Wentz, and Jimmy Garoppolo could all hinge on whatever the Jets decide to do at quarterback.
The way I see it, there are two logical options with the young QB.
1. Give Darnold another shot, use your assets to fix all the other damn holes in this nightmare roster rather than introduce a rookie to this hellscape
Phew, long subtitle.
Anyway! Any progress Darnold made between his rookie and sophomore seasons was promptly dashed in 2020. It’s tough to imagine there’s a step backward from telling a national television audience “I’m seeing ghosts” against the Patriot defense, yet Adam Gase managed to shove his young ward backward like a playground bully.
Darnold looked in no way, shape, or form like a franchise quarterback last fall. While 2018 Draft classmate Baker Mayfield restored his value as a useful starter and Josh Allen evolved into a bonafide MVP candidate, the former USC star stagnated as the Jets won just enough games to avoid clearing up their whole quarterback situation. This is almost certainly *not* a blessing in disguise, but it could still create a net positive for a team in desperate need of silver linings.
Darnold is only 23 years old. He’s a year younger than Allen and two years younger than Mayfield. Expecting him to improve, especially once freed from Gase’s dampening influence, isn’t a far-fetched idea. I am fully aware “quarterback wins” are a mostly meaningless stat, but he still went 7-6 as a starter on a late-stage Gase team in 2019. That’s borderline fantastical.
Darnold also did that while playing behind an offensive line that allowed him to be pressured more often than all but three other starting quarterbacks. His pockets crumbled on nearly 30 percent of his dropbacks that fall and 27.5 percent of the time in 2020 -- the same amount as Russell Wilson, who told the world he gets hit entirely too much and that it affects his game significantly during Super Bowl week.
The Jets have committed to improving their offensive line, and though last year’s free agent acquisitions haven’t panned out Mekhi Becton looks like a future All-Pro at left tackle. New York can stick with their current quarterback and select Oregon bulldozer Penei Sewell at No. 2 or after a minor trade-back to give Darnold a pair of elite tackles capable of keeping his jersey clean enough to realize his potential as a pro.
The other factor in Darnold’s lack of development is an absolutely brutal receiving corps. The best target he’s had over the past three seasons is Jamison Crowder, who is a nice slot option but not the WR1 you’d count on to push a young passer to greatness. Robby Anderson’s departure in free agency left Breshad Perriman and Braxton Berrios as his No. 2 and 3 targets in 2020, which is the NFL’s answer to “For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.”
This year will bring another immensely talented crop of young wideout talent to the league, which would give New York the chance to add some talent behind Crowder and 2019 second-rounder Denzel Mims. The team could also use its $68 million in cap space -- third most in the league -- to add an impact receiver like Allen Robinson, Chris Godwin, Corey Davis, or JuJu Smith-Schuster to the lineup.
Upgrading the talent around Darnold would, at worst, help get him back to 2019 status. That would give Saleh and his new crew of coaches the chance to properly evaluate him. They could still trade him after the draft or even into the regular season if so inclined, though that seems much less likely than a spring deal.
2. Trade Sam Darnold now, while you can get somewhere around the 20th-40th pick for him
There’s a long way to go before the 2021 Draft, but early reports suggest there’s solid interest around the league in a Darnold trade. It’s not quite “two first round picks for Matthew Stafford” fervor, but the Colts and 49ers are reportedly in the mix and could send a late first or early second-round pick back to New York in exchange for the young signal caller.
Swapping out Darnold may be a step backward, but there’s a chance 2021 will be all about un-learning all the galaxy-brained dipshittery of Gase’s vacated offense. Rather than move into a fixer-upper, Saleh and the Jets could opt to build an entirely new franchise QB from the draft. They’d have their pick of any player not named “Trevor Lawrence” and, if Indianapolis truly is in the mix, the chance to add a late first or early second-rounder to a haul that already includes Nos. 2, 23, and 34.
While the Jets' quarterback’s stock has never been lower, this may still be New York’s best opportunity to unload him for any meaningful return. If he remains as bad as he was in 2020 or shows only minimal growth, no team in the league will be interested in rostering him in 2022 for around $25 million. If the team decides to trade him after the draft it will have lost valuable leverage, especially if it drafts a passer. If Darnold is a Jet come April 30, then he’s all but locked in for the season opener.
This could be extremely detrimental to the New York rebuild. There’s a good chance the awful version of the strong-armed slinger we saw last fall will stick around.
Was pressure and receiving help an issue in 2020? Sure! But Darnold ranked 32nd out of 35 qualified starters when it came to on-target throws, per Pro-Football-Reference. His average air-yards per pass dropped to 7.7 (22nd among starters) but he completed only 59.6 percent of his attempts. He dialed up a ton of easier, shorter throws last fall and still managed to complete fewer passes than any starters but Drew Lock and crisis Carson Wentz.
Even if he can return to 2019 form *and* show a 15 percent improvement from the salad days of that 7-9 season, he’d still be a roughly average quarterback. If he does make a leap thanks to a solid supporting cast, the recent rise and fall of young players like Jared Goff and Mitchell Trubisky -- each of whom played well enough to earn playoff spots weighted heavily by major improvements at the skill positions around them, then promptly vacated their teams’ Super Bowl dreams -- will leave fans and executives wondering if it’s sustainable. There’s no inherent advantage in sticking with Darnold over “unnamed rookie drafted second overall” aside from familiarity with the Jets ... and New York’s primary move this offseason has been to dismantle the Tinker Toy engine that fell apart every week under Gase.
If Darnold doesn’t improve in 2021, he’s likely to leave town with nothing coming back to New York but a 2023 compensatory draft pick. He’s also likely to be just good enough to keep the Jets out of the top overall pick and possibly out of a top three selection going forward. There’s a very real risk the Jets miss out on the quarterback they need in 2021 thanks to Darnold, then miss out on him in 22, 23, 24, 25, etc., as this mediocre play ripples outward. In fact, that would be the most Jets possible way to do things.
New York needs to make a decision. Will the Jets bet on Darnold as the player they hoped he’d be when they traded up for him in 2018? Or will they hit reset and get something meaningful in return for him while they still can? The rest of the league is waiting on that decision. -- CD
Like father, like son
Forget Bruce Arians’ first ever Gatorade bath, or a plastered Tom Brady tossing the Lombardi Trophy to Gronk — much to the displeasure of the daughter of the man who designed the trophy — during the boat parade. My favorite Super Bowl celebration was this sweet father-son moment, which made the rounds almost a week after the Bucs’ win:
(At the three-second mark, check out Winfield Sr. toe-tapping around the guy who slipped in the confetti — I’m convinced he could still play, and not just because he’s the same age as Brady.)
Winfield Sr. was a bit underrated in the NFL, though he went to a few Pro Bowls and was a god-tier tackler in a 180-pound body. He never made a Super Bowl because he played all 14 of his seasons with the Bills and Vikings, but he came tantalizingly close during the 2009 season when the Vikings lost to the Saints in overtime of the NFC title game. Cruelly, Winfield Sr. came close to winning a Super Bowl one other time. In 2013, he signed with the Seahawks but decided to retire when he found out he wouldn’t make the final roster. Seattle went on to win the Super Bowl that season.
That championship bad luck predated his NFL career. In 1998, Winfield starred for an all-time great Ohio State team that could’ve and should’ve won it all, if only it hadn’t crapped the bed at home against Michigan State, then coached by Nick Saban. The Buckeyes did beat Brady’s Wolverines two weeks later and finished No. 2 in the polls, but that inexplicable loss kept Winfield from winning a title during his college career.
Fortunately, Winfield Jr. inherited almost everything from his father except his lack of championships. Now, Winfield Sr. can vicariously live through his son, and judging by his euphoric reaction after the game, he’s perfectly happy to celebrate a Super Bowl win that way. — SH
The trial of the century … so far
It’s not often that the NFL, as a corporate entity, gets held accountable for its biddings. I remember when the concussion settlement finally happened: it was a relief, but it turns out there are some serious holes in the whole thing that leave a lot of former players and their families holding the bag for the league’s malfeasance.
Another thing the NFL, and every other major sports league does, is gouge local communities for tax dollars to build stadiums. Few teams ever got a better deal than the Rams did when they relocated from Los Angeles to St. Louis in the mid-90s. Not only did the city agree to pay for the full cost—about $280 million—for building the Edward Jones Dome, they agreed to maintain it’s “first-tier status,” which was essentially a clause that let the Rams dictate stadium demands in perpetuity. In reality, it became a clause that the let the Rams bolt back to Los Angeles, where owner Stan Kroenke could double, at least, the value of his asset just by changing the zip code. And it’s not just the Rams’ valuation that got a bump from moving to the West Coast; NFL owners were more than happy to accommodate them—and the relocation effort at the league level was most vocally championed by Jerry Jones—because the overall value of the league got a big lift from finally having a stable franchise and a sweet new stadium in L.A.
I was at the owners meeting in January 2016 where the Rams got the approval to go. It was a weird, weird scene, but most of all, I remember just being wholly deflated by the whole thing, even more cynical about pro sports as a business than I already was.
There’s nothing wrong, per se, about Kroenke moving the team; it’s his asset to do whatever the hell he wants with (like hire Jeff Fisher or sign Jared Goff to a massive, ill-advised contract extension). The problem is how he and the NFL went about making that happen. After suffering some PR losses during a flurry of relocation in the 90s, the league clamped down, making it an avenue of last resort. Teams were able to make the threat of leaving town in order to leverage local rubes into ponying up for a new billion-dollar building, but it usually ended with Roger Goodell and team owners in a closed door meeting with local politicians. That’s what happened in Minnesota. And before the Chargers and Raiders were finally allowed to move, those teams and the NFL went round and round for years trying to find a stadium solution in San Diego and Oakland.
That wasn’t the case for St. Louis. Kroenke and the league NEVER had any intention of staying there, not once they had an owner who could pay for his own gilded football palace in the country’s entertainment center. Nevertheless, they went through the motions with St. Louis, an abbreviated process that culminated in a damning report issued by Kroenke’s camp that pretty much took everything everyone’s ever said online about St. Louis-style pizza and threw it against the city. Their report included such jewels as:
“[St. Louis] lags, and will continue to lag, far behind in the economic drivers that are necessary for sustained success of an NFL franchise.”
Not only was the league trying to wiggle the Rams out of the city, it was also salting the field for any future NFL team to spring up in St. Louis.
This, mind you, conveniently helped to undermine a pretty serious stadium effort launched by local entities that had gone so far as to sell naming rights for more than $150 million to help pay for the thing.
Now, the city of St. Louis has a chance at getting a point on the NFL. They’re currently suing the NFL for a billion dollars, damages aimed at recuperating the expenses for being made to do the NFL’s dance in bad faith to try and keep the Rams. And so far, the case is trending in their favor. The fact that the courts rejected an effort by the league to take the matter to closed-door arbitration was an important early win. The two entities are still hammering out technicalities, but it’s scheduled to go to trial this fall.
Even as the NFL has kinda, sorta backed away from extorting cities for billions in the stadium hustle, this could be the first measure of accountability handed to the league for decades of holding communities over the barrel to enrich its exclusive club of 31 billionaires with a heaping helping of corporate welfare. As an added bonus, we might even get a peak into the league’s super secretive finances, which they work very hard to keep under wraps and away from prying eyes. For me, this is going to be the Super Bowl. —RVB
im am back here oh ya
ya hold that up hahaha