#Sam Darnold’s future: NFL experts give Jets’ QB mixed reviews

The Jets may need to get Sam Darnold bigger shoulder pads this year because the 23-year-old quarterback has a whole lot resting on those shoulders.

As he enters his third season, not only is his own future riding on his 2020 performance, but also the futures of head coach Adam Gase and the entire Jets organization. The Jets drafted him No. 3 overall in 2018 with the belief he could transform a franchise. So far, there have been glimpses of greatness interspersed with stretches of poor play.

The Jets are 11-15 in two years when he starts. He has thrown 36 touchdowns and 28 interceptions and completed 59.9 percent of his passes.

Darnold is the ultimate football Rorschach test. Some people look at him and see a franchise quarterback. Others look at him and see a future backup.

Maybe we will know more by the end of the 2020 season. The Jets need to find some answers. They have a decision whether to pick up his fifth-year option for 2022 that needs to be made by May 2021. They also need to decide if they want to lock him up with a long-term contract. Gase’s future is directly tied to how Darnold performs. If he struggles, the Jets could move onto another coach in 2021. If he thrives, Gase should remain even if the team fails to make the playoffs again.

With Jamal Adams now in Seattle, Darnold is the face of the franchise more than ever. No player is more critical to the Jets’ hopes in 2020. The Post spoke with several analysts trying to solve the riddle of what exactly the Jets have in Darnold.

Too much inconsistency

Nearly everyone who evaluates Darnold agrees he is maddeningly inconsistent. Some will chalk that up to him still being a young player. He is younger than Joe Burrow, who just got drafted No. 1 by the Bengals. Others see it as a part of his game he may never fix.

“When you compare him to the rest of the league, he’s been below average,” Pro Football Focus senior analyst Steve Palazzolo said. “I think our numbers show that. I think the interesting part of his entire career, even at USC, is he really has small spurts of really good play and then spurts of horrendous play.”

That was never more evident than last year when Darnold returned from his three-game absence due to mono and led the Jets to a win over the Cowboys, a game in which he made some magnificent throws. The following week, the Patriots destroyed him and he was caught saying he was “seeing ghosts” on a microphone he was wearing. He looked like a completely different quarterback from one week to the next.

But if you looked closely at the Cowboys game and not just at the result, you would see Darnold got away with some bad mechanics. His feet were not often in the right position, but he still completed the throw. He could not get away with as much the following week against the Patriots.

Greg Cosell, who breaks down film on ESPN’s “NFL Matchup” show, studied six of Darnold’s games from last season, including the Cowboys and Patriots games.

“What makes Darnold a hard and frustrating evaluation is that he can make high-level throws without proper lower-body mechanics,” Cosell said. “That’s a knack that he has, but as a coach you do not want to accept poor mechanics.”

It is a tricky thing for Gase and quarterbacks coach Dowell Loggains. Darnold has the ability to make throws off of a “bad platform,” in football-speak. That can be a good thing. But it also can result in bad habits. The Jets must walk the line of trying to improve Darnold’s mechanics without taking things out of his game that make him special.

“Darnold’s lack of consistent footwork and balance in the pocket have been the same since I evaluated him coming out of USC,” Cosell said. “It may be one of those things that you have to live with and work within that framework.”

The Patriots confused Darnold with a heavy dose of “Cover Zero” blitzes when they did not have a safety in the middle of the field and brought six or more pass rushers. It left Darnold flummoxed.

“Darnold natural tendency to play a little fast and a little frenetic really hurt him versus Patriots zero blitz,” Cosell said. “Darnold at times did not recognize quick throws that were there.”

At times Darnold does not look like he knows what he is looking at from a defense. That is an area where Gase must work with him to improve entering this season.

“My sense watching these six games was that Darnold must develop a better feel for what he is seeing, both pre-snap and post-snap,” Cosell said. “That comes with coaching and experience.”

The numbers

The analytics community is not kind to Darnold. PFF rated him as the 31st best passer last year. He holds onto the ball too long and struggles under pressure, according to the metrics. He has not fared much better in traditional statistics. He was 27th in QB rating last year and 25th in ESPN’s QBR.

“I would say the concerning part for Darnold is in the stable metrics,” Palazzolo said. “Clean pocket, early downs, not using play-action, throwing the ball beyond the sticks, avoiding negatively graded throws, he is well into the bottom half of the league.”

Palazzolo also pointed to deep-ball accuracy as an issue for Darnold. That is something Darnold has said he worked to improve this offseason.

He struggled in the red zone, as well, last year, throwing four red-zone interceptions, tied for the most in the league.

Even though the statistics may paint a bleak picture, Palazolo said they may not tell the whole story.

“I think this is a pivotal year,” he said. “I think we’ll come out of this season and he might not take a statistical jump, but I think he can take a jump from an on-field play standpoint. I think Jets fans would want to look at it through that lens. There’s a chance we come out of this season and say, ‘Sam Darnold took a big step forward. His PFF grade went up and throw for throw he was better. It just didn’t show up in the stats.’ ”

Mitigating factors

One big part of the Darnold discussion is always about the obstacles that have slowed his progression. A foot injury in 2018 and mono in 2019 led to six missed games, and in the case of last year an interruption in his development.

He has played behind one of the worst offensive lines. The Jets set about fixing that line this offseason, hoping it helps Darnold. He has not played with a top wide receiver either.

Darnold also had a coaching change between his first and second seasons, forcing him to learn a new system last year. He did not appear comfortable in Gase’s system until about halfway through the season. In the second half of the season, though, Darnold threw 13 touchdowns and just four interceptions and his rating was 93.5.

All of these things have led his fiercest defenders to say it is impossible to evaluate him. ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky said this spring he would draft Darnold over Lamar Jackson and every other quarterback taken since 2018.

“I love Lamar Jackson,” Orlovsky, who played 13 seasons in the NFL, said. “He is a superstar, but if you mean to me that if Sam Darnold went to a team with a top-five run game and some pretty darn good skill players and a scheme that was absolutely perfect for him and a top-five defense, we wouldn’t think of him differently? We’re in a time where it’s not 20 years ago when quarterbacks make all these other guys better. The other guys make the quarterback better because of the timing and the space of football and the matchups.

“If I had to take a guy in the last three draft classes for the next 10 years, it would still be Sam.”

Domonique Foxworth often debates this point with Orlovsky on ESPN. He questions why Orlovsky makes excuses for Darnold but not others.

“It doesn’t feel like Sam Darnold goes without being criticized,” Foxworth, the former safety, said. “But in that particular argument, and it feels like Dan and I have had that conversation for a while where Dan puts Darnold up near these other guys despite the fact that he hasn’t achieved nearly as much. When you make him face those things, he starts to rattle off excuses. We tend not to do that with other people. At some point it’s a production league. He hasn’t produced. I think it’s probably fair the excuses or explanations that Dan makes for him. Some of it I think it’s fair but I think it’s fair for many other quarterbacks who are not afforded that.”

What now?

As the Jets reported to camp last week, Gase said he sees a more confident Darnold.

“He has a little bit different way about him,” Gase said.

While there are doubters on the outside, the Jets still believe Darnold is their long-term answer. Darnold said he understands football more now and has confidence he can be consistent.

There is still plenty of belief in Darnold.

“I think there’s been enough promising things throughout his career, including at USC, that he can put it together,” Palazzolo said. “He’s still young. He’s been below average to this point, which doesn’t preclude him from being good. It is a big year for him to take a step forward.”

Foxworth believes it is on the Jets to surround him with more talent.

“I think he is like a lot of quarterbacks in the league. He can thrive in the right situation,” Foxworth said. “I guess two years may be unfair, but he doesn’t strike me as someone who you drop on a team and then everything changes. He’s someone who in a good situation could thrive.”

Cosell preached patience.

“Overall Darnold has clear talent to work with,” Cosell said, “but he must become more refined and buttoned up on the details of the position, both physically and mentally. He is a young QB still learning the position and it takes time.”

Jets fans hope Darnold goes into hurry-up mode this season and no longer is a question but shows them he is the answer they have been waiting for.