After word emerged that Saints quarterback Derek Carr has a shoulder injury that could cause him to miss the 2025 season, the betting odds swung toward the Saints taking quarterback Shedeur Sanders — and the question became whether someone would jump the line in front of the Saints to get him.
Now that the odds have dramatically readjusted, with the Saints penciled in for Georgia defensive end Mykel Williams, it’s fair to now ask whether someone will try to jump past the Saints to get Williams.
Here’s a team to watch: The 49ers.
The 49ers currently pick at No. 11. They could move up to No. 8 in a trade with the Panthers, or to No. 7 in a trade with the Jets, to get Williams before the Saints can take him.
If that happens, here’s a name to watch for the Saints at No. 9: Marshall defensive end Mike Green.
The guy who does our mock draft has the Steelers taking Michigan tight end Colston Loveland at No. 21. That’s not going to happen. Because they likely won’t have the chance to get him.
Teams are divided, we’re told, on whether Penn State’s Tyler Warren or Loveland is the top tight end. Some have Warren at No. 1, others have Loveland.
The slight lean is toward Warren.
The teams to watch when it comes to tight end are the Jets at No. 7, the Bears at No. 10, and the Colts at No. 14. It’s possible both Warren and Loveland will go to two of those three teams.
The Jets are specifically intriguing because, last year, they opted for tackle Olu Fashanu at No. 11, passing over superstar tight end Brock Bowers, who landed two spots later with the Raiders. This year, will they go with another tackle in lieu of Warren or Loveland?
Much of that will depend, frankly, on whether and to what extent owner Woody Johnson is telling his football people, “You know, we passed on Bowers last year.” That raises the stakes on passing on another tight end who could become an instant high-end contributor.
Last week, former Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers told the world about the way the team treated him on the way out the door. Former Jets (and now Rams) receiver Davante Adams already knew about it.
“We golfed together on a Wednesday [Feb. 5] in Vegas, at Shadow Creek, and then [Rodgers] told me he was going to [meet with the Jets] on Thursday [Feb. 6] and then come back and we’d play again Friday,” Adams recently told Mike Silver of TheAthletic.com. “And he was just in such a bad mood [after the meeting] that he hit me up and was like, ‘I’m not coming back, bro.’ He’s like, ‘This was horrible; they just disrespected me completely.’”
Adams’s first reaction was to regard it as an exaggeration.
“I thought he was being a little dramatic at first,” Adams told Silver. “I’m like, ‘Bro, don’t paraphrase it. How did he say this?’ [But] that’s how he said it. And I was shocked because I didn’t think anybody had the balls to, for lack of better words, to hit him with it like that. Just flat out — ‘Yeah, I think we’re just gonna do something different. We’re gonna move in a different direction.’ It was shocking, but right from that moment, I knew there was no chance that I’d be back there.”
Adams wouldn’t have been staying with the Jets without a drastically revised contract. His salary was due to mushroom in 2025, as part of the effort to bump up the APY on his five-year deal with the Raiders. With Rodgers leaving, there wouldn’t have been a reason to keep Rodger’s close friend.
The Jets haven’t, and won’t, engage in a pissing match with Rodgers over whether the meeting went the way he claims. There’s nothing to be gained by wrestling in the mud with Rodgers.
Besides, his whining about it helped prove their point that it’s now about the J-E-T-S, not man who used to play Q-B there.
Aaron Rodgers shared his displeasure with how the Jets handled his release from the team last week, but the Jets aren’t interested in slinging any mud back in his direction.
Rodgers complained that he paid for a flight for a meeting with new Jets head coach Aaron Glenn and General Manager Darren Mougey that ended after 15 minutes with the team telling him they were not interested in continuing their relationship. Rodgers said the approach lacked an “ample amount of respect” and referred to the Jets as a “debacle” during an appearance on The Pat McAfee Show.
Mougey was asked about Rodgers’s comments during a Monday press conference. Mougey said he addressed the team’s decision to move on without Rodgers during the Scouting Combine and had nothing else to add to the conversation.
“I understand the question, but I’m just going to talk about the draft and current Jets players,” Mougey said.
Glenn will likely get asked about Rodgers when he speaks to the media during the draft, but there’s little reason to think that the new regime is going to change its tune when it comes to a player they didn’t have anything to do with acquiring in the first place.
The Jets had three first-round draft picks in 2022, and they’re committing to all three of them at least through 2026.
Jets General Manager Darren Mougey said today that the team will exercise fifth-year options on 2022 fourth overall pick Sauce Gardner, 10th overall pick Garrett Wilson and 26th overall pick Jermaine Johnson II.
That means Gardner gets a guaranteed base salary of $20.1 million in 2026, Wilson gets a guaranteed $16.8 million and Johnson gets a guaranteed $13.4 million.
That’s a lot to guarantee three players, but the Jets are lacking in talent, and hitting on their three first-round picks in 2022 was one of the few things they’ve done right in the personnel department in recent years. So they don’t want to let any of those three players go.
The Jets will likely try to negotiate long-term contract extensions with Gardner, Wilson and Johnson, but even without any additional negotiations, they’ll all be with the Jets for two more years.
