Rowan Viles
Being a diehard football fan can be extremely exhilarating, waiting to see how your team performs year after year. Unfortunately for fans of the New York Jets it’s the same story every year: bottom of the league. The NFL is designed to give bad teams the best chance at succeeding by giving them the first picks of the draft. The Jets have historically picked quarterbacks when they have had early round 1 picks. This being said, there is a long list of young early draft quarterbacks that have failed the jets. It arguably started with Chad Pennington in 2002. While Pennington is not a “bad” quarterback he never saw a pro bowl in his 8 year career. He had a 90.1 passer rating and the NFL average is currently 93.6. Next was Kellen Clemens, who was a second round pick of the Jets in 2007. Clemens had a lowly passer rating of 68.9 and he would be replaced by Mark Sanchez in 2009. Mark Sanchez was the fifth pick of the first round of the 2009 NFL draft. He was supposed to lead the Jets to many championships and earn many titles. This of course would not happen. Sanchez ended his career with a passer rating of 73.2, a completion percent of 56.6 and had 86 touchdowns to 89 interceptions. Comparing Sanchez to Tom Brady may not be fair but for reference Brady has an astonishing 610 touchdowns to 199 interceptions. Needless to say Sanchez was not the magic key to success that the Jets needed. Geno Smith was a second-round draft pick out of the 2013 draft after the Jets got rid of Sanchez in 2012. Smith only started for 2 years with the Jets and he did not put up anything special. He had an average passer rating of 72 , 25 touchdowns, 34 interceptions, and an average completion percentage of 57.3. The Jets did not choose to pick a first round quarterback until 2018, four years later. Sam Darnold was third overall pick in the 2018 draft. He did not play horribly, he racked up a respectable 8097 yards across three seasons, however he did not last. He was replaced just this year by Zach Wilson who was the second pick of this year’s draft and so far he has not impressed any Jets fans. While he has not even completed a single season he has shown that he is falling into the same trap that the rest of the aforementioned quarterbacks fell into. Wilson may be able to surprise everyone by having a breakout year in 2022 but as of now expectations are low. The jets are currently the second worst team in the entire league and it does not look like it will change in the coming weeks.