Cade's Potential

Edition #1091: Cade Klubnik = Brock Purdy? Where the Jets stand on the cap and any other notes.

Good morning ☕

You’ll be delighted to hear that both my kids made a full recovery just in time for their birthday party (strange that). Two hours hosting 25 children with bouncy castles, sweets and ride along cars is quite the experience. I’m still not over it.

All the clamour has subsided following the draft, so we’re here to pick through the bones of news surfacing at the moment.

As mentioned last week, through the off-season you’ll still receive five newsletters into your inbox every single week. Monday, Wednesday and Friday will be note form, Tuesday and Thursday will be longer-form pieces.

I want to make sure that we have five newsletter to give every reader, subscriber and contributor a consistent place to talk football, or anything else that comes to mind. Maybe even those New York Knicks, who are heading to the next round! Let’s just not talk about the Mets!

So let’s get into the little news that we have to discuss today.

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NEWS & NOTES

• Matt Miller believes that if any QB is going to be the Brock Purdy of this draft class it’s going to be Cade Klubnik:

  • “You hate to make the [Brock] Purdy comparison because it’s so overused at this point, but if there’s going to be a Purdy in this year’s class, it’s going to be Klubnik because of the experience, the athletic ability, the arm, and the situation.”

    • [DWH THOUGHTS] It’s an interesting thought and I agree with Miller that is’ very overused at this point, but athletic profile wise and arm talent wise they are very similar. Cade is in that unfortunate position where he was being talked about as a first round pick and then had a down year, I don’t think Purdy ever got that hype. But they’re both experience, Klubnik played 49 college games, Purdy 48. Purdy completed a slightly higher % of throws 67.7% vs 64.0%, as well as TD rate 5.5% vs 5.1%, and Klubnik had a lower INT rate at 1.7 vs 2.2. You don’t want to put any pressure on Cade right out the gate but I do love a true underdog story.

• The Jets made three draft picks in the first round, on one have that gives them three elite prospects with 5 years of team control. On the other hand it costs more money to draft someone in the first than in the second, but according to Rich Cimini there is still plenty of cap space if the Jets wanted to make another move or two.

  • “The Jets made a league-high three first-round draft picks, so it makes sense that their total rookie pool is a league-high $23.5 million, per Over the Cap. The rookie signings will eat up about $16.5 million in actual cap space. They’re in a good place cap-wise -- about $40 million under the cap.”

• Russel Wilson took a visit with the Jets and there was believed to be some mutual interest in getting a deal done, but his next stop could come in the studio instead of on the field according to The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand:

  • “Russell Wilson is in deep discussions to go into television, which could mark the end of what is likely a Hall of Fame career as an NFL quarterback. The NFL Today,’ CBS’ Sunday pregame show, is considered the favorite as the two sides have had lengthy talks, the sources said.”

    • [DWH THOUGHTS] I’ll be honest and say I have less than 1% interest in adding Russel Wilson to this team. Last year with the Giants he showed that the former magic is all but gone. We have that veteran presence in Geno Smith and with QB coach Bill Musgrave. Wilson went 0-3 with a 58% completion and 3TD to 3INT and it could have been much worse. If you want to sign a backup for Geno from the veteran pool by all means do so, but bring someone in with a little more life left in the legs/arm than Wilson.

• Rich Cimini had a really interesting segment in his Sunday newsletter on David Bailey which looked at his college sack production and there were several points that were noteworthy in the assessment:

  • “Film review reveals that he won with outside speed on no fewer than seven sacks -- plays in which he blew past the tackle. He used power (i.e., bull rush) on two sacks, including one against Oregon in the College Football Playoff. He used a natty spin move for another two.”

  • He was only double-teamed on one of those sacks and it was a TE chip.

  • 155 of his 353 pass-rush snaps came with Texas Tech leading by 14+