The Jets have added another quarterback to their roster.
They traded up in the fourth round on Saturday and used the 110th selection to take former Clemson starter Cade Klubnik. He joins Geno Smith, Brady Cook and Bailey Zappe on the depth chart for the AFC East club.
Klubnik was a three-year starter for Clemson and came into the 2025 season with thoughts of going earlier in the draft. He threw 36 touchdowns and ran for seven more in 2024, but his production went the other way in his final season for the Tigers and he’ll now try to turn things around under offensive coordinator Frank Reich.
The Jets also acquired the 199th pick from the Bengals and sent the 128th and 140th picks to Cincinnati.
The prank call that Shedeur Sanders received during the 2025 draft made Kenyon Sadiq wary when he got a call from the Jets during the first round on Thursday night.
In a video shared by the team, Sadiq can be heard telling Jets head coach Aaron Glenn that he thought it was a prank call before Glenn assured the tight end that they were making him the 16th overall pick.
“That’s just like my biggest fear, with Shedeur and all that stuff that happened with him,” Sadiq said in a Saturday press conference. “It’s such a moment full of so many emotions. It’d be kind of not a fun way to get a prank call and stuff like that. But, no, obviously the call and everything was amazing. . . . It was really just when I started talking to each individual coach and management and those things. Then it really kind of hit me, ‘This isn’t a prank call, this is the real deal. I was super excited.”
Sanders was on the receiving end of a prank call by the son of Falcons defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich pretending to be from a team picking Sanders before he was ultimately drafted by the Browns in the fifth round. Ulbrich and the Falcons were fined for not securing Sanders’ number. As PFT noted this week, the NFL has tightened the distribution list for contact information this year but Sadiq was still wary before fully celebrating his entry into the NFL.
The Jets traded up to take wide receiver Omar Cooper with the 30th pick on Thursday night and they added one of his Indiana teammates after trading down to the 50th pick of the second round.
Cornerback D’Angelo Ponds was the Jets’ selection. He and Cooper both played key roles in Indiana’s run to the national title and Jets head coach Aaron Glenn said on Thursday night that he liked that all three of the team’s first-round picks were from teams that made the college football playoffs.
Ponds followed Curt Cignetti from James Madison to Indiana and had a pick-six to kick off the Hoosiers’ playoff win over Oregon. The Jets had no interceptions last season, so they’ll be hoping Ponds can make the same kind of impact.
Cooper and Ponds are joined in the rookie class by edge rusher David Bailey and tight end Kenyon Sadiq.
The Lions have moved up six positions in the second round to select a player who might be familiar to plenty of their fans.
With the No. 44 overall pick, Detroit has selected Michigan defensive end Derrick Moore.
Moore played 53 games for the Wolverines with 24 starts over the last two seasons. He was a first-team All-Big Ten honoree in 2025, finishing the season with 30 total tackles, 10.5 tackles for loss, 10 sacks, two forced fumbles, and three passes defended.
He tallied 24.5 tackles for loss and 21 sacks in his collegiate career.
Now he will be able to play opposite fellow Wolverine, Aidan Hutchinson, at the highest level.
Detroit sent No. 50 and No. 128 to the Jets in exchange for the No. 44 overall pick.
Fernando Mendoza was locked in as the Raiders’ choice as the first overall pick for quite a while and that left the Jets’ choice at No. 2 as the first major question mark of the draft.
The Jets were seen as making a call between David Bailey and Arvell Reese for the last few weeks and betting markets flipped several times when it came to which player was the favorite. One of the flips came after the Jets canceled Bailey’s visit to the team’s facility and bettors weren’t the only ones reading the tea leaves about what that meant about the team’s intentions.
During a press conference on Friday, Bailey said his first reaction was that it meant the Jets were going in the other direction.
“Initially, I probably thought they’re not going to pick me,” Bailey said. “But I was thinking back to the interactions prior to the meeting getting canceled and I was thinking back to the interaction I had with them at the Combine and at the steakhouse and the FaceTimes with Mougey. I had a good relationship with them. I felt good talking to them. I feel like they had a good attitude towards me and vice versa.”
Bailey said his agent provided further reassurance that the canceled visit didn’t mean he was out of the running at No. 2 and Thursday night’s pick made it clear that the meeting wasn’t a make or break part of the equation for the Jets.
