The Bills aren’t ready to move up in the draft because they haven’t finished their quarterback evaluation. The Jets opted not to wait -- if they indeed moved to No. 3 to get their first top-five quarterback since Rex Ryan landed the guy he dubbed the Sanchize.
Assuming for now that the Jets flip-flopped with the Colts to get a quarterback, the Jets necessarily feel strongly enough about at least three rookie quarterbacks as of right now to justify making any of them potentially the team’s first true franchise quarterback since Joe Namath. It’s one thing to fall in love with one, maybe two. But to feel strongly enough about three different options that they’d give up three second-round picks now to get in position to pick one of them (possibly, the guy they’d put at No. 3 on the list) seems odd, to say the least.
That’s one of the reasons why it makes sense to ponder the question of whether the Jets moved to No. 3 in order to get running back Saquon Barkley. A lifelong Jets fan whose father has a Jets tattoo, Barkley arguably is the best plug-and-play option at the top of the draft. With a win-now vibe in New York, Barkley will be more relevant to that goal than a quarterback who’ll be stuck on the shelf behind Josh McCown and maybe Teddy Bridgewater.
It’s also possible that the Jets opted to move up without a specific, finalized wish list. With the Bills obviously interested in climbing to the top five, the Colts may have persuaded the Jets that, if they didn’t jump now, the Bills would. So the Jets made the move, and they’ll figure out what to do with the pick between now and April 26, as if they’d earned the No. 3 spot all along.
That potential dynamic opens the door to another possibility that can’t be ruled out. If the Jets ultimately conclude that there are fewer than three players deemed worthy of the No. 3 overall pick, the Jets could trade down without someone else.
There’s still no consensus quarterback hierarchy, and once the first two picks go a player at the very top of some other team’s draft board will be sitting there, ready to be drafted. The Jets at that point would be trading not the pick but a clear, defined, actual player. If a player the Jets covet is gone, trading down could be the best option.
For now, the Jets won’t be telling anyone what they plan to do. Nor should they. It’s important to say nothing regarding their plans, both in order to avoid being leapfrogged and to persuade the fan base and the media that, ultimately, they got precisely what they wanted.