HACK & BLUE
THE JETS have plenty of NFL draft blunders to choose from. Just go to YouTube and you can find a video from a few years ago that ESPN did of Pete Rozelle and Paul Tagliabue announcing picks to groans and disbelief from Jets fans.
A recent draft mistake is going to be on the minds of Jets fans Sunday as they watch Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs almost certainly embarrass their team. Mahomes could have been a Jet in 2017, but former general manager Mike Maccagnan passed on him with the No. 6 pick because he believed the Jets might already have their quarterback of the future in Christian Hackenberg, and if they didn’t, they would grab him in the 2018 draft, which was being viewed as a more QB-rich draft.
Three years later, it is clear what a miscalculation this was by Maccagnan. It is one of many he made as Jets GM and it is part of the reason the current team has such little talent.
In fairness, Maccagnann drafted a very good player in-nstead of Mahomes when he se-lected Jamal Adams out off LSU. Adams became an All-Pro before the relationship be-tween him and the Jets fellll apart this past offseason overr money and he was shipped too Seattle.
So, no, this was not takingg Kyle Brady over Warren Sapp.p.
Mahomes, however, lookss like a generational talent, a future Hall of Famer andnd maybe the best quarterback for the next decade-plus. I don’t care how good Adams is. You take that guy.
The Jets were in quarterback purgatory at the time. Hackenberg was entering his second season. Bryce Petty was entering his third. The team had signed Josh McCown as a veteran stopgap.
After speaking to several people who were in the Jets’ organization at the time and were involved in the draft, it is clear the Jets never seriously considered drafting Mahomes. They had worked him out at Texas Tech and even had him to Florham Park for a visit. But Maccagnan was committed to giving Hackenberg a chance to play in 2017 after taking him in the second round the year before.
Todd Bowles and his coaching staff had already made up their minds, though, that Hackenberg could not do it. Maccagnan should have seen that and moved on, even though he would have been criticized for wasting a second-round pick. He just delayed that criticism by a year.
Maccagnan did already have an eye on 2018, too. Sam Darnold, Josh Rosen and Josh Allen were all seen as top picks a year before their draft. The Jets were dumping veterans that offseason and there was speculation they were planning to tank the 2017 season. That was never accurate, but the Jets did feel confident they would be choosing early in the 2018 draft and would have a shot at a franchise quarterback.
That did not stop them from doing work on the top quarterbacks in the 2017 class — Mahomes, Mitchell Trubisky and Deshaun Watson. They worked them all out, but there was not a lot of conversation about selecting one of them with the sixth pick. One person who was high up in the organization said Maccagnan was secretive about everything, afraid information would leak, so there were very few people other than his righthand man, Brian Heimerdinger, who knew exactly what the GM was thinking. Maccagnan did not respond to messages seeking comment for this column.
The truth is, Maccagnan was not the only one who underrated Mahomes. Nine teams passed on him, including other QB-needy teams like the Browns, Bears, 49ers, Chargers and Bengals. The Chiefs moved up 18 spots to take Mahomes at No. 10, worried the Saints or Cardinals were going to draft him.
You could excuse Maccagan by saying he was not the only one who got it wrong or pointing to the mock drafts that had Mahomes going late in the first round, but he was paid a lot of money to be a better talent evaluator than everyone else. The Chiefs nailed this one and drafted Mahomes even though they already had Alex Smith, a better quarterback than the Jets had on their roster.
Call it hindsight, but Maccagnan botched this one badly.
It has worked out for Mahomes. He already has one MVP trophy and a Super Bowl ring. If the Jets had drafted him, chances are things would not have gone so smoothly. He would not have gotten a year to learn behind Smith or gotten the chance to play for Andy Reid and with weapons like Travis Kelce and Tyreek Hill.
Still, Mahomes looks like he has the type of talent to overcome anything — even the Jets.
They’ll get an up-close look at that talent Sunday and it will be a painful reminder for Jets fans of what could have been.