Davante Adams is now a member of the New York Jets. What can we say about the trade that brings the star wide receiver to New York?
It's difficult to see how this trade turns the Jets into a Super Bowl team.
This Jets team just hasn't lived up to the hype it received in the offseason. The Jets were perceived as Super Bowl contenders in the national media (and certainly didn't shy away from pumping up their own chances). However, six weeks into the season, this is a 2-4 football team.
Of course a top notch team can have a rough six weeks. Unfortunately for the Jets, there isn't a whole lot out there suggesting this is a legitimate contender camouflaged by bad luck.
The Jets currently rank 14th in point differential, 21st in DVOA, and 14th in Pro Football Reference's SRS metric.
The team hasn't faced an inordinately difficult schedule to date. In fact, the six Jets opponents have a combined winning percentage of exactly .500.
This team has played six games. It has won one of those games by multiple scores.
If you want to look at those middle of the pack metrics along with the team's 1-3 record in games decided by a score or less and say the Jets are a bit unlucky to not be 3-3, I think you are making a fair point. There, however, is little telling us this team is anywhere close to as good as advertised.
And if we are going to be honest, the Jets aren't getting anything close to the level of quarterback play they need to go a long way. Aaron Rodgers has sprinkled in a few good games, but he has looked 40 years old. He is currently 25th in yards per attempt, 22nd in QBR, and 26th in passer rating.
If you are going to give up a day two pick for a receiver about to turn 32 years old, I think there should be a reasonable chance he puts your team over the top. You need to be like the third best team in the league, and this addition makes you the top team. You shouldn't be a middle of the pack team.
Expectations for Adams are too high.
I know the most likely rebuttal to everything I just wrote will be something like, "Adams is an elite receiver. He's going to lift Rodgers up, and turn the Jets into a contender. All of these issues are reasons the Jets needed to make this deal."
Let's just say you're asking a lot if you still want Davante Adams to play at an All Pro level.
Adams turns 32 on Christmas Eve. I used the Stathead database to look at every wide receiver season in the last decade from wide receivers who turned 32 within the season they were player or were older. There wasn't a single 1,300 yard season. There was one 1,200 yard season, which was produced by Larry Fitzgerald in 2015. Heck, there were only seven 1,000 yard seasons.
The bottom line is that for Adams to remain an All Pro guy capable of transforming an offense, his aging curve will need to be an extreme outlier. I'm not sure anybody should believe a mere 1,000 yard receiver alone can fix an offense that has looked as discombobulated as we have seen from the Jets, and even to hit that mark Adams will need to be something of an outlier.
Adams himself saw his production take an appreciable hit a year ago. His yardage went from 1,516 in 2022 to 1,144 in 2023.
You might argue that is solely the product of his quarterback situation. I'd argue that just proves airdropping Adams onto a team isn't a magical cure to fix any offense. If he was, the Raiders wouldn't have finished 26th in yards per attempt a year ago.
The Jets don't value their Draft picks properly.
This trade is the latest example of the Jets not putting a proper value on their Draft picks.
There are times I get the feeling the Jets think their 13 year postseason drought is just a string of unbelievable bad luck. Of course, there has been plenty of bad luck along the way. But this team's biggest problem is how frequently it turns away from NFL best practices.
The teams that win consistently in the NFL do so because they draft well. Drafting well requires having picks.
Whenever a team makes a trade like this, the justification goes something like, "What are the odds that pick will turn into a good player? X is a proven commidity."
This isn't the only thing that needs to be considered, however.
Keep in mind that the NFL is a league with a salary cap. There are only so many players you can pay. On a roster with 53 players, 22 of whom are starters, that means you need to find quality players with low salaries. There is no better place to do that than through the NFL Draft.
The second and third rounds are essential to good team building. In these rounds there are still a lot of quality players around, and they cost far less against your salary cap than the typical first rounder.
You might say, "Only X percent of third round picks end up good." That means you should be trying to add MORE of these picks, not less. Remember, you have to find low cost contributors. Where else are you going to find them?
College scouting in an area of the game fraught with difficulties. It isn't easy to project how 20-23 year olds will project to the pro game playing in more complex systems against better competition. There are some things you can't even predict, like a player suffering a career-altering injury.
The point is that teams should be looking to build in a margin for error by having multiple picks. Doing so allows you to still add an adequate pipeline of quality young players while still acknowledging you will make mistakes along the way with your evaluations the way every team does.
This isn't to say that you should never trade away a pick for a player. It does, however, mean you need to find the right balance. You should also on the whole be adding more picks than you are sending out.
Where are the Jets? They did not select a player in the third round of the 2023 NFL Draft. They did not select a player in the second round of the 2024 NFL Draft. The Haason Reddick trade has them down a third round pick in 2026.
2025 could have been a year where the Jets at least made up for this a bit. They added an extra 2025 third round pick in the spring in a Draft day trade with the Detroit Lions. After a few years of deficit, the team finally had a surplus to replenish the well. Now that's gone.
Diminish the value of these picks all you want. Sending one out the door might not be a big deal, but when you consistently find yourself short on picks, it puts pressure to have an unrealistic batting average in the Draft to stock the team with an adequate number of low cost talented young players.
The Jets always seem to wonder why they don't have a good team. One of the big reasons is their refusal to value their picks.
Before we move on, I want to address my least favorite argument in favor of this trade. It goes something like, "The Jets just drafted Malachi Corley, and he's not doing anything. So who cares? We just don't pick another Corley."
First of all, I think six games are too few to write off a player like Corley, who was always a project.
More to the point, the Jets haven't drafted well in the third round in recent memory. The Jets also have not been a very good team in recent memory. Think about everything I wrote above, and ask yourself whether there's a connection. I would submit that the solution is the Jets need to start hitting on their third round picks, not jettisoning them.
The Jets have an unappealing decision on Adams waiting for them.
They can cut Adams. That gets them out from the financial commitment, but it also means they burned that valuable third round pick for an 11 game rental. And players who are cut do not factor into the compensatory pick formula so there is no chance of recouping that pick from Adams signing with another team.
They can keep Adams at that price. That leaves them with the biggest cap hit for a wide receiver in the league on a player who will turn 33 in season. I refer you to the aging curve of NFL wide receivers.
They can lower that cap number by working out an extension with Adams. But based on the $35.6 million starting point, getting Adams to a reasonable number will almost certainly require the team to guarantee him multiple seasons. For a guy turning 33 in the first season of an extension, that also does not seem like great business.
These are the options the Jets have waiting for them. Good luck.
How Adams will impact the Jets on the field.
Now that we have gotten through how problematic I think this deal is for the Jets and how expectations for Adams are inflated, let's talk about the on field impact the team can expect. I see two areas where Adams could have an outsized impact.
The first is his ability to get quick separation. Adams is known for having one of the best arsenals of releases off the line of scrimmage to beat press coverage. With Rodgers at a point of his career where his primary goal is to distribute the ball quickly (4th quickest time to throw in the league per NextGen Stats), having targets who can get open just as quickly is essential. Garrett Wilson was the only quick separator among Jets receivers prior to the trade. Additional help in this area should benefit the offense.
The second is his existing chemistry with Rodgers. Of course chemistry can be built over time, but we have discussed the unique value of chemistry for a quarterback like Aaron Rodgers. Rodgers is more improvisational with his throws than almost any passer in the league. It doesn't matter what the play call is. If he sees a vulnerability in a defense, he will scrap whatever the play is and attack that vulnerability. He expects his receivers to see the same thing and adjust accordingly. Adams will help the Jets hit some of those plays which have been left on the field with the other receivers.
Just don't expect him to work miracles for this team. There's only so much the Jets can expect from him.