Sam Darnold doesn’t look great after 30 games but the Jets failed him just as badly.
A brief glimpse at Sam Darnold’s 30-game career doesn’t look pretty. He’s only won 11 games, completed less than 60 percent of his passing attempts and his 1.2 touchdown-to-interception ratio is mediocre at best.
But pinning all of Darnold’s failure on the quarterback is a bit unfair if you look at what other teams around the league have done with their young quarterbacks and compare it to the Jets’ roster the past three seasons.
Just look at the team the Jets lost to in Week 5. The Cardinals only won five games in 2019 after drafting Kyler Murray first overall, but quickly upgraded their offense by trading for Kenyan Drake midway through the season and then trading for Pro Bowl wideout DeAndre Hopkins during the offseason. Hopkins and Drake alone combined for 193 total yards and two touchdowns on Sunday.
Imagine if the Jets had playmakers like that for Darnold.
Instead, Joe Douglas and the Jets organization surrounded Darnold with a makeshift offense, inadequate weapons on cheap contracts and a conservative offense that doesn’t play to Darnold’s strengths. He’s on pace for the worst statistical season of his short career, which almost assuredly would spell the end of his time with the Jets if New York lands the No. 1 overall pick in the 2021 draft.
No one would fault the Jets for moving on from Darnold for someone like Trevor Lawrence after three bad seasons, but would a rookie quarterback fair any better?
The Jets have had one of the worst offenses in the league the past two years and their skill position players also rank among the worst. While teams like the Cardinals, Ravens, Bills and Browns built offenses around their young quarterbacks and added stars, the Jets let quality starters like Robby Anderson walk and brought in Breshad Perriman and Denzel Mims. Both have been injured pretty much all season and haven’t proven to be quality replacements. Le’Veon Bell and Chris Herndon are solid players, but the offense Adam Gase installed diminishes their talents.
Darnold has shown two sides of himself. One side looks like Aaron Rodgers with his ability to extend plays with his legs and launch improbable passes, but the other features poor decision-making that ends in bad throws or turnovers. A good coach, a stable of weapons and a sturdy offensive line could change that, but there’s no telling if either will come in time to rescue Darnold’s Jets career.
It would be much easier for the Jets to move on from Darnold if he showed no progress with a well-rounded team at his disposal. The bad decisions and turnovers would look even more glaring and his true ability would be revealed.
But that hasn’t been the case.
Darnold didn’t play in Week 5 but he wouldn’t have faired much better than Joe Flacco did against the Cardinals. There just isn’t enough firepower on offense for any quarterback to perform well. So evaluating Darnold based on incomplete assets isn’t a good representation of his skillset. He simply doesn’t have the necessary tools at his disposal to show off his true ability.
You could make the argument that a quality quarterback would play well despite the roster around him – and that’s true – but Darnold never really had a true chance to play up to his potential. Every team he’s played on never featured a star player and he was never given the opportunity to grow after he had to learn a new offense a year after entering the NFL.
Three years in and the Jets just don’t know any more about Darnold than they did in 2018. He’s operated the same as a rookie because he hasn’t been given the option to develop naturally. Is that reason enough to move on from him? Yes, maybe. But if the Jets trade him before the 2021 season – as some have speculated as recently as Sunday – they would be giving up on a player they never gave a fair shake.
