Posted in: NFL, Sports | Tagged: entertainment, HRL, Indianapolis Colts, Mike Maccagnan, New York Jets, nfl, sports

NFL Draft 2018: Trade Near the Top as Jets and Colts Swap Picks

Published Sun, 18 Mar 2018 16:56:20 -0500

The New York Jets are desperate for a franchise quarterback, but the team had no luck in free agency with Kirk Cousins signing with Minnesota, Case Keenum going to Denver, and Alex Smith headed to Washington. They resigned journeyman Josh McCown, who had a good 2017 season for the team but isn't the long-term solution. They signed Teddy Bridgewater, who was once the future of the Vikings until a catastrophic knee injury sidelined him for almost two seasons. And when Bridgewater was finally healthy, the Vikings chose to stick with Keenum on their playoff run, maybe signalling that the young quarterback had a lot more rust to knock off still.

It looks like the team has turned their attention to the NFL Draft, now five weeks away. To put themselves in a better position to draft one of the top quarterback prospects, the team has swapped first round picks with the Indianapolis Colts, moving them up from number six to number three in the first round. Along with the swap, the Jets had to throw in two second round picks from this year and a second rounder from 2019. This tells us that whomever they have their sights set on, they were willing to go from having three of the first 50 picks to just one, three picks earlier. That's quite a statement — and you don't do that for just any position.

Which prospect are they after? The team's general manager, Mike Maccagnan, has been booking a lot of plane rides lately. He's attended the pro days for Oklahoma's Baker Mayfield and UCLA's Josh Rosen. He's also scheduled to to see Wyoming's Josh Allen and Southern California's Sam Darnold. Those four are considered the top prospects this year, and picking third will give them one of them. The teams picking first and second are the Cleveland Browns and New York Giants. The Browns are expected to take a quarterback and the Giants might with Eli Manning, now 37 years old.

This works out very well for the Colts, who went 4-12 while waiting to get Andrew Luck back. The team now has four picks in the top 50, which gives them a chance to improve their team quite a bit with the right selections.

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