The last couple of days I’ve been thinking about a famous story, the parable of the drowning man.
A massive flood hits a small town, and the water rises so quickly that one man is forced onto the roof of his
house. Being a man of deep faith, he prays fervently: “Lord, please save me. I trust in you.”
A neighbor paddles by in a rowboat and shouts, “Jump in, I’ll take you to high ground!” The man shakes his head and says, “No thanks, I have faith. God will save me.”
The water rises higher. A rescue team in a motorboat speeds up to the house and drops a ladder. “Quick, get in before the current gets too strong!” Again, the man refuses: “I am waiting for God to save me.”
Finally, as the man is clinging to the very peak of his chimney, a police helicopter hovers overhead and lowers a rope. The pilot screams through a megaphone, “Grab the rope!” The man looks up and shouts back, “Go away! My God will deliver me!”
Eventually, the water sweeps the man away and he drowns. When he arrives in heaven, he is confused and a bit upset. He meets God and asks, “Lord, I had such perfect faith in you. Why did you let me drown?”
God looks at him and replies: “What more did you want? I sent you two boats and a helicopter.”
I don’t think need to be spiritual or religious to appreciate this story or its moral.
The Jets remind me of the man.
The last two weeks have been a bit of a roller coaster for the franchise.
If you listened to some people, the Week 18 loss to the Buffalo Bills finished a successful tank, which secured the future of the franchise. It left the team in position to select Oregon quarterback Dante Moore with the second overall pick.
Things took a bit of a downturn last weekend when Moore played poorly in a Peach Bowl loss to Indiana. Suddenly the future wasn’t so secure.
But it was easy enough to dismiss that a one bad game for a prospect who still had plenty of room to grow. Within a few days, Jets fans could talk themselves into Moore being the savior of the franchise. That might have been true up until the point Moore announced he was returning to Oregon in 2026.
Where does that leave the Jets? Responses have been all over the place. Incredibly, it has led some people to lament that the Jets did not tank hard enough despite the team producing record-setting futility near the end of the season.
Others have called for the team to tank again in 2026. How else can they find a quarterback?
These obviously aren’t the sentiments of the entire fanbase, but these opinions aren’t in an extreme minority either.
This sort of thinking isn’t isolated in the Jets fanbase either. Through large portions of NFL fanbases, there seems to be a perception that the only way to get a quarterback and by extension build a good team is by sinking to the bottom of the league and picking a quarterback in the NFL Draft.
One thing that amazes me about conventional wisdom in the NFL is how infrequently the conventional wisdom is tested to see whether it actually works.
This weekend, eight teams will play in the Divisional Round of the NFL Playoffs. The other twenty-four teams wish they were there. For this season at least these are the eight most successful teams in the league.
Let’s think this through. For how many of these teams could you say a bad season, a top Draft pick, and a quarterback selection from that pick were the catalyst to change everything?
I think you could say it was the case with the Houston Texans and CJ Stroud. You could also say it with the New England Patriots and Drake Maye.
For the rest it’s tough to make that argument. Josh Allen had a similar effect for the Bills, but he was picked seventh overall and was the third quarterback off the board in his class. The Denver Broncos aren’t really a quarterback dependent team and picked Bo Nix twelfth overall. The Rams were a successful team that got their quarterback, Matthew Stafford in a trade. The Seahawks signed Sam Darnold in free agency. The 49ers whiffed in a trade up to the top of the Draft. They got their guy, Brock Purdy, as the final pick in the Draft.
You also have the Chicago Bears who did pick Caleb Williams number one overall, but the pick they used to select Williams didn’t originally belong to them. It was obtained through a far sighted trade with Carolina, who sent it the year before to move up for Bryce Young.
It’s great for Aaron Glenn, Darren Mougey, and Woody Johnson if the fanbase believes that the only way to have a successful team is to earn a pick at the top of the Draft and pray that a franchise quarterback is there to be selected. If that’s the case, you can’t blame them if the team fails to have success. They did everything right but were sunk by the terrible luck of Moore returning to school.
For years the Jets have been the NFL’s answer to the man on the rooftop. They have pinned their hopes on one magical solution solving all of their problems. We have seen a steady stream of shortcuts, quick fixes, and gimmicks to turn around the league’s least successful franchise. Big name players have been added. Impulsive firings have been made to spark the team. And most recently we had the fiasco that were the last five weeks of the 2025 season.
Sometimes you get lucky in the NFL as the Texans did with Stroud and the Patriots did with Maye. That can’t be your Plan A with no Plan B, though. Even in these cases, the quarterback can only do so much. The Texans aren’t playing this weekend without the defense DeMeco Ryans built, and the Patriots didn’t start winning games until Mike Vrabel arrived and instilled credibility into the franchise.
Even acknowledging the role of getting lucky with their quarterbacks, the reality is the teams like Houston and New England are the exceptions.
Both last year’s champions, the Philadelphia Eagles and the dominant team of this era, the Kansas City Chiefs found their respective starting quarterbacks in the Draft coming off division championships.
It seems obvious that just picking a quarterback at the top of the NFL Draft isn’t a cheat code to having a great team. Building a successful franchise is hard. You need to value Draft picks, build out at the important positions, manage your salary cap, hire a coaching staff that develops players, and so much more. And as you do these things, you need to be opportunistic when you have a chance to add the right quarterback.
I have news for you. If the only path to the Jets being successful was picking Dante Moore second overall, this team was sunk anyway.
The Jets have their own rowboat, motor boat, and helicopter in the form of their salary cap space and extra early Draft picks this year. Another chance to find a quarterback will come along. It always does. If the fail to build a good team, it will have a lot more to do with the people in charge squandering the resources at their disposal than Dante Moore returning to Oregon. The Jets don’t need to hope to be saved when they possess the tools to save themselves.
