There are two things to rate in the Jets draft today: The trade for Cleveland’s pick and then the pick itself.


First the trade: According to the draft trade value chart, the Jets did pretty well, trading 1,300 points worth of picks and three (mostly) expendable players to move up. Of course the reason that the Browns were happy to take bodies and an extra pick for the fifth overall was because they didn’t want to spend insane money for a player who’s never taken an NFL snap. But we’ll be charitable and say Tannenbaum did well in phase one. Then there’s phase two…


Fail.

Look: First round picks are coin-flips. There are no sure things. Period. At best you’ve got a 50 percent chance of hitting with them (some teams are better than others, but so on and so forth). So my view is that you mitigate the long odds by selecting players with track records. Great players play great, as someone once said. Give me a producer over someone who was a mediocrity in college but ran really fast <<cough, Darius Heyward Lam Jones, cough>> or benched a lot <<cough, Vernon Gholston, cough>> at the combine. That’s first round picks generally. Let’s look at quarterbacks.


Quarterbacks taken in the first round … don’t do well. Theyre under 50-50. The only thing riskier than a first round quarterback? A first round underclassman quarterback. They have a remarkable history of being bad. And I’ll go ahead and say that the next step in this progression is logically: What’s worse than a underclassman quarterback? An underclassman quarterback who has one year as a starter under his belt. This is, as they say in the movies, not good Mav.


Oh yeah and–Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco notwihstanding–rookie QBs don’t do well even when they turn into great players down the line. So the Jets have traded up to take a really long gamble that won’t pay off for years under the best scenario. And they’re going to plunk down an absurd amount of money in the process.


And guess what? The Jets had some pretty glaring holes even before they drafted Sanchez. Their wide receiving corps consists of a number two receiver (Jerrico Cochery) and a bunch of inexperienced players; they have one tight end who doesn’t block; their defensive ends are getting old … and oh yeah, they just traded one away. So yeah, they need a new one of those too.


For my money the Jets should have stayed put and drafted Jerem Maclin. Or better — taken the trade with Tampa that Cleveland got and drafted Hakeem Nicks or Percy Harvin.


But put all the organization’s eggs in the Sanchez basket? No thanks.