Nothing ever seems to break in favor of the New York Jets. After another dismal season at 3-14, the Jets couldn’t even acquire the No. 1 pick as the Las Vegas Raiders snuck in front of them with just a slightly stronger strength of schedule.
And in most seasons, the No. 2 pick would be a great spot to land a top of the line quarterback, but not this season. It’s a historically weak QB draft class, headlined by Fernando Mendoza who is likely to go No. 1 overall to the Raiders, and then there’s a massive drop-off to the second best QB in Ty Simpson, who is projected to be a day two pick.
So, unless the Jets want to run it back with Justin Fields or Brady Cook, they’ll need to look elsewhere to find their quarterback for the 2026 season.
NFL Insider Predicts Jets Will Trade For Spencer Rattler
There are plenty of options for New York to look at on the quarterback market, albeit none of them are great.
ESPN’s Seth Walder, who was previously a beat reporter for the Jets, is predicting that New York will strike a trade with the New Orleans Saints to acquire Spencer Rattler.
Rattler is entering year three of his four year entry level deal, and has started 14 games for the Saints in the last two years. The bad news is that his stats would suggest that he has been pretty abysmal as an NFL starter: a 1-13 record, 2,903 passing yards, a 62.7 completion percentage, and a TD-INT ratio of 12-10.
While I could make the point that his poor stats came because he was with a relatively bad Saints team, he wouldn’t be coming into a much better situation in New York. Rattler isn’t a quarterback that will magically make the Jets better or spark some kind of culture change within the organization, but there are two positives for New York if they were to acquire him: he’s cheap and he won’t make the team worse.
I know that isn’t what Jets fans want to hear, but they are in a true “strip it down to the studs” situation right now. New York has no real quarterback, it just traded away Sauce Gardner and Quinnen Williams, and Breece Hall may be on his way out. Instead of wasting a pick this season on a QB who likely won’t be a franchise guy, the Jets can instead start building their weak positions back up and use Rattler as a band-aid as they head into the 2027 draft, which is projected to be very strong at the QB position.
Other Options for Jets at Quarterback in 2027
Like I mentioned before, there are other options for the Jets to explore at QB this offseason, but all of them have their own pitfalls.
Free agents like Malik Willis or Kirk Cousins would certainly be better options on the field than Rattler, but both would cost way more money, and wouldn’t be long term fixes.
Mac Jones delivered an inspired performance for the San Francisco 49ers last season, putting himself back in the national conversation as a starter. He could be the Jets starter, but he would cost New York much, much more in a trade than Rattler would.
At the end of the day, the Jets aren’t going to be a winning team in 2026, so why spend a ton of money on a band-aid.
Could the Jets slap some lipstick on a pig and see what happens? Sure. But, at least to me, it makes far more sense to stay down in the mud a little longer and see if you can find a diamond down the line.
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