NFL Network’s Charles Davis: The Jets Pick at #2 in the NFL Draft Will Be…?

Charles Davis is wrestling with the second pick. He tells Rich he was stuck on Ar'vell Reese for the longest time, but the more he stares at the Jets roster the more he keeps circling back to David Bailey. Reese is the higher ceiling, the freaky athlete, the projection bet. Bailey is the floor, the production, the guy who already does it.

Rich pushes on the canceled Bailey top-30 visit. Davis waves it off. He has a rule, he says, about reading tea leaves out of cancellations. He never knows what they actually mean. Maybe they cancelled because they are sold and needed to spend that visit slot on someone else with the second first-round pick coming up. The Jets already had dinner with Bailey. They have done the homework. If they don't know by now, they don't need another sit-down.

Davis brings up the Jay Cutler precedent to drive it home. The Broncos never talked to Cutler before drafting him at eleven. Mike Shanahan told the building to stay away, don't contact him, don't even look in his direction. Cutler showed up on draft night surprised it was Denver. Sometimes silence is the strongest signal a team can send.

Then Davis pivots to why Bailey, full stop. He saw the Jets in Week 18 up in Buffalo at the end of last year and called it abysmal. In the production meeting the night before the game he counted four or five players on his board the Jets were running out, guys he had already evaluated three and four weeks earlier on other rosters because of injuries and turnover. The roster needs a full overhaul. Wins follow improvement, and improvement starts with a pick that does the job on day one.

The athletic ability on Reese is undeniable, Davis says, but Bailey is just more of a known quantity. He graduated Stanford in three years, transferred to Texas Tech, made his money, and could be a doctor one day if football does not work out. There is not a lot left to figure out on the kid.

Rich, on behalf of every Jet fan who has been burned by a top-five pick, lands the button. It is a good thing David Bailey has a real career to fall back on. If it does not work out, he will be fine. Davis laughs and calls Rich a scarred individual. Rich admits he reached for the low-hanging fruit. The conversation lands where every Jets draft conversation lands lately, somewhere between hope and a flinch.