Evaluating the rookie quarterbacks with three weeks to go

#2 Sam Darnold

Darnold was really careless in particular in his meetings with the Dolphins, turning the ball over six total times

For the second quarterback drafted in April it has been much more of an up-and-down season.

Right now he leads the league with 15 interceptions despite missing three games and he has thrown just 12 touchdowns compared to that.

He has also completed 60 percent or more of his passes in just four of his ten starts and he has three games in the 30s in terms of quarterback rating.

However, he also gave the entire Jets fan base hope with an incredible performance in the season-opening destruction of Detroit, led them to big wins over AFC playoff contenders in the Broncos and Colts while putting up 34 and 42 points respectively and he just rallied them to a win over the Bills, in a game they probably should have lost.

Even his first play in a regular season game was very shaky, as he started off his career with a pick-six throwing across the field. This already showed you that he will take chances and he has tried to fit throws into tight windows on plenty of occasions.

Yet, he has also displayed that he is mentally strong enough to shake those things off and go after it the very next snap. After three straight losses in which he threw two TDs compared to four picks, the Jets put together their only consecutive wins.

They followed that up with another trio of losses, in which Darnold really looked bad at times. Overall he has two games with two INTs, one with three and another one with four.

I watched almost all his tapes and there were some dark moments, but you also see what I liked about him coming out of USC and he is as tough as a five-dollar steak.

Darnold was really careless in particular in his meetings with the Dolphins, turning the ball over six total times.

He got fooled by a defender in underneath coverage drifting one way and then coming back for the pick and once stared down his receiver on an out-breaking route, allowing the linebacker to drop all the way underneath it.

However, in week two he almost led his team back to a victory and his second interception was more on the receiver running a weak route in the end-zone and allowing the DB to beat him to the spot plus his receiving crew dropped four passes, while in week nine he had to deal with horrendous snaps for about half the game and threw his final two interceptions on fourth-and-very long, although another two were flat-out dropped by defenders.

Still, even in those games you saw clutch throws on third down and good accuracy on the move. That has been the theme for large stretches of his rookie campaign – turnovers and risky throws happening due to a lack of help from his pass-catchers.

Even versus the Vikings, when he threw three interceptions, one of those throws was a wobbler because his left tackle getting pushed into him during the release and one came off the hands of his receivers on a perfectly placed slant route.

During Darnold’s three-game absence you could see how bad this roster still is. They lost all three games with Josh McCown at the helm, including a 41-10 embarrassment against the Bills, who were without their starting rookie QB as well.

Darnold played far from a perfect game last Sunday at Buffalo, but he willed that team to victory.

He got banged up early, went two of seven on third downs through about the first 40 minutes and made a really stupid decision on his interception, just tossing it up there scrambling all the way to the sideline and expecting a receiver to come up with it after turning his out-route upfield.

But he also delivered some absolutely perfect balls right in stride on corner, deep out and fade routes that kept his team alive and made the play of the game on third-and-goal when he was flushed right and reversed all the way across the field before finding Robby Anderson in the end-zone.

He completed another big one on a go-route to Anderson, where he freezed the middle safety for a second and then dropped it right into the bucket of his receivers versus the Bills’ top corner Tre’Davious White, which set up the game-winning touchdown.

The third overall pick has definitely had his struggles as a rookie, but a lot of that had to do with the team around him. Darnold has no true, dependable playmakers around him outside of Anderson and to a lesser degree Quincy Enunwa and his offensive line has been suspect at times.

I loved what I saw from him in the preseason, diagnosing defenses pre-snap and then not panicking when they tried to confuse him, but rather moving on to his next read and delivering strikes.

I am also encouraged by just four fumbles on the year, because I thought his biggest concern in college was the lack of ball-security while moving around.

Say what you want, but I still believe in this kid being the Jets’ savior, because I think he has the perseverance to recover from bad plays as well as one bad season, and let’s not forget he only turned 21 a week after he was drafted.

He can make those standard plays that keep offenses on schedule, but he can also create when nothing is there and deliver accurately outside the pocket. They need to load up with pieces around him to help their future out.