{"id":20227,"date":"2026-04-24T13:13:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T13:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/20227\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T13:13:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T13:13:12","slug":"jets-show-the-love-in-round-1-making-3-selections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/20227\/","title":{"rendered":"Jets Show the Love in Round 1 Making 3 Selections"},"content":{"rendered":"

Entering night one of the 2026 NFL Draft, the Jets were one of six teams who owned 2 first-round picks. After selecting Texas Tech edge David Bailey<\/a> (No. 2 overall) and Oregon TE Kenyon Sadiq<\/a> (No. 16 overall), the Green & White moved back into the first round and used the 30th pick to take Indiana WR Omar Cooper Jr.<\/a><\/p>\n

“When you have targets, you identify guys you like, you love \u2013 you go get them,” said HC Aaron Glenn. And that’s exactly what we did today.<\/p>\n

“And any time you can bring guys with a winning background on your team, that only helps the morale of your team. So, there’s a lot of things that goes into that, but to get three first-round picks and the caliber guys that we got, the personality, the mentality, the football character, all those things are huge, bringing those guys on our team.”<\/p>\n

For months, pundits wondered if the Jets would opt for Bailey or Ohio State edge\/LB Arvell Reese with the No. 2 selection. Although they liked both players, Bailey’s pass rushing prowess stood tall and made the decision easy for the Green & White. Last season, Bailey (6-5, 251) tied for the FBS lead with 14.5 sacks and he ranked second with 19 TFL. Reese was taken by the crosstown Giants with the 5th pick in the draft.<\/p>\n

“Both of those guys\u2026 are really good players,” Glenn said. “Listen, Arvell’s going to have a really good career in this league, but when you just continue to evaluate those guys, we just felt like Bailey fit us better when it comes to he’s a 6’4″, 255 pound man with 34 inch arms that has a ton of production in college. Listen, we looked at all those things, and he fits us.”<\/p>\n

Then midway through the second round, the Jets got an athletic freak in Sadiq with the 16th overall pick. Sadiq (6-3, 241) set an Oregon record for tight ends with 51 receptions and led all FBS TEs with 8 receiving TDs. He posted a 4.39-time in the 40-yard dash and recorded a 43.5-inch vertical jump at the NFL Combine in February.<\/p>\n

“Sadiq was a player that, obviously we studied, spent a lot of time on and valued as an offensive weapon,” said GM Darren Mougey. “And when he was there it was really a no-brainer for us, just to add another weapon to the offense. And Frank’s (Reich) got a great vision for the player and how we can use him in multiple ways and get in 12-personnel and do different things and just use him as another weapon and make it tough on the defense.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Entering night one of the 2026 NFL Draft, the Jets were one of six teams who owned 2…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20228,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[313,314,12167,8,3611,9,7],"class_list":{"0":"post-20227","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-2026-nfl-draft","9":"tag-draft","10":"tag-draft-tracker-card","11":"tag-headlines","12":"tag-latest-headlines","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116459864215169877","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}