The Ball of Clay

Edition #625

Good morning.

Notes on the Jets are few and far between at the moment. Most of the NY sporting focus rests on the Knicks and Rangers as both chase a championship. The NFL tries to fill out the calendar but when your regular season is only active for 32% of weekends in a year you’re going to have some downtime.

Today we’re going to have a look at Jordan Travis and focus on one area for improvement and one area where he does well in comparison to his peers.

ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler explained recently that Brock Bowers while a consideration was never really in play for the Jets at #10 - "The sense around the league is the Jets were pretty set on Penn State tackle Olu Fashanu at No. 10 overall ... unless Washington receiver Rome Odunze was available. The people I've talked to believe the Jets would have jumped at Odunze, though they correctly figured Chicago was taking him there," Fowler explained. "Georgia tight end Brock Bowers was a consideration for the Jets but not a major one. New York was also very high on Washington tackle Troy Fautanu but had some long-term durability concerns about him."

Albert Breer believes that the Jets were actually targeting Adonai Mitchell as their wide receiver: "And once [Olu] Fashanu was aboard, their attention turned to a receiver. Similarly, that call came down to a few guys. The Jets actually liked Texas's Adonai Mitchell, but got focused on the best run-after-catch guys they could find in range of their second pick at 72," he wrote.

Ashtyn Davis and Michael Carter II were on hand to see the NY Rangers score a double-OT winner against Carolina to take a 2-0 series lead in their Eastern Conference semi-finals, and Nick Mangold managed to photo-bomb them with a beer in hand.

There are three main knocks on Jordan Travis. He’s on the smaller side at 6’1, his follow-through mechanics are wild, and not in a good way and he doesn’t have the biggest arm. But what he does do is lead and win games. He has elite athleticism, a good feel for the position and he attacks the middle of the field.

The Jets coaching staff believe they have someone who can develop into the natural successor to Aaron Rodgers. To do that they’ll need to clean up the fundamentals, but with Aaron wanting to play another 2-4 years, and Tyrod Taylor in the building as the veteran backup, the Jets have something they’ve rarely had with a rookie QB. Time.

"I think he hasn't even scratched the surface," Saleh said. "He was winning games, doing things that were just pure athleticism. If we could tie in the football part to it, I think we've got ourselves a pretty damn good football player."

Travis has spoken about taking over from Aaron when the time is right, but right now the focus is on getting back onto the field. After a serious leg injury derailed his final season at Florida State, Travis is looking to bounce back quickly and he said he never thought that the injury would impact his ability to make the jump to the NFL and continue his football career.

"Never," he said. "I mean, I love adversity. I love waking up every single day and having to make a choice. It just makes the story a whole lot cooler. I've always had that from the day I broke my leg until now. So I love it. So there's never been a doubt."

Looking at his time at Florida State you can see why the Jets were interested. Travis lasting until day three wasn’t a surprise, most expected him to be a 5th round pick. His injury coupled with his limitations and mechanical flaws almost guaranteed that, but that also reduces the pressure on his shoulders. It reduces the spotlight, at least a little bit.

I took a look at some of the metrics for Travis and found some interesting things from PFF. Including this trait chart in stable metrics. None of this will blow you away, but it does indicate how effective he can be when kept clean.

This is further enhanced by his comparables which had him at a 90.8 grade when no pressure was generated by the defence, which drops to 50.6 when pressured.

If you’ve read TJW since it started, you’ll know that I firmly believe that performance under pressure is a good indicator of success in this league, if you struggle under pressure then carving out a starting role for yourself in the NFL is tough. It’s not impossible and some players like Josh Allen can significantly improve as they develop. But that’s not the norm. In 2018 Allen completed 28.3% of his passes under pressure, which jumped up to 41.9% the next season, and in 2022 he completed 51.3% with 14 touchdowns to 5 interceptions. So improvement can happen.