They will have to decide whether they want to keep the third overall pick or trade down to stockpile more selections. Many factors..."WhiteFanposts Fanshots Jets StoriesScheduleRosterStatsYahoo Jets NewsYahoo Jets Team PageYahoo Jets ReportYahoo Jets Depth ChartYahoo Jets TransactionsYahoo Jets PhotosOdds About Masthead Community Guidelines StubHub ✕How frequently is a top three pick one of the three best pros from his Draft class?New Womens Kelvin Beachum Jersey ,20commentsEDTShareTweetShareShareHow frequently is a top three pick one of the three best pros from his Draft class?The Jets will have a decision to make in a little under a week. They will have to decide whether they want to keep the third overall pick or trade down to stockpile more selections. Many factors will determine what their ultimate decision, most importantly what they are offered for the pick. To make a good decision, the team will have to understand the true value of the third pick.Throughout Draft season I have encountered a mindset in the Jets fanbase that I believe is mistaken. There seems to be a widely held perception that staying with the third overall pick virtually guarantees the Jets a superstar player, while trading down makes that substantially less likely. With that in mind, I decided to do a little research to see how often the top three players selected in a Draft actually turn out to be one of the three best pros from that class.I took a look at 15 Drafts from 2000 through 2014. Classes selected in 2015 or later have not yet completed their rookie contracts (four years plus one year team option) so I felt it was too early in their careers to judge.Pro Football Reference has a tool called Approximate Value (AV) that offers a ballpark figure of a player’s value. It isn’t a totally perfect way to rank players, but it does a good job offering a big picture view of how players rate against each other (hence the word approximate...so spare me your minor quibbles about whether one player here or there belongs on the list).In these 15 years I found the three players in each class who produced the highest career AV and looked at where they were selected.Here are some of the key things I found.Of the 45 players who were in the top three best players of their Draft classes over this 15 year stretch, only eight of them were selected in the top three. (17.8%)Expanding things a bit, 16 of the players on the list were picked in the top ten. (35.6%)The most common spot for a top three player in a class to be selected during this period was the 11th overall pick. (5 players)34 of the 45 players were among the top 32 selections in their Draft class. (75.6%)39 of the 45 players were selected in the first two rounds of the Draft.(86.7%)On a fun note, the Jets signed two players in free agency this year who ranked in the top three of players in their respective Draft class. (Le’Veon Bell and C.J. Mosley)......................................I think this actually says some pretty good things about the evaluation skills of NFL teams. From this elite club, three quarters went in the top 32 picks and over 85% went in the first two rounds. Teams aren’t repeatedly passing on the elite talent.It also does show that your odds of finding the best players in a Draft class are higher when you are picking at the top.The fact 17.8% of the top three players in a class went in the top three overall picks is again fairly impressive in context. The top three picks represent just over 1% of the entire Draft class each year and yet 18% of the club is comprised of these players.With that said, we see that owning a top three pick hardly guarantees one of the top three players in a Draft class. In fact, the odds are very much against landing one even when picking in the top three.And the odds of landing an elite player don’t become substantially more dire when dropping out of the top three. There are five times as players in this club who were picked 11th overall than there are players who were picked 3rd overall.My conclusions are similar to those I have drawn in similar examinations of the Draft.The odds of hitting in the top three seem substantially lower than the general perception.While the odds of success do get lower from trading down, the degree by which the odds fall is not as great as many make it out to be.Trading down always has a cost, but as was the case with some of our other looks at the Draft, it seems that cost might not be as great as conventional wisdom suggests. This must be weighed against the benefits from acquiring additional picks.*Players in the top three of AV from their respective Draft classes used for the purposes of this article:2000: Tom Brady, Brian Urlacher, Shaun Ellis2001: Drew Brees, LaDainian Tomlinson, Reggie Wayne2002: Julius Peppers, Ed Reed, Dwight Freeney2003: Terrell Suggs, Carson Palmer, Kevin Williams2004: Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, Eli Manning2005: Aaron Rodgers http://www.jetslockerroom.com/authentic-keyshawn-johnson-jersey , Logan Mankins, DeMarcus Ware2006: Jahri Evans, Haloti Ngata, Andrew Whitworth2007: Adrian Peterson, Patrick Willis, Darrelle Revis2008: Matt Ryan, Calais Campbell, Joe Flacco2009: Matthew Stafford, Clay Matthews, LeSean McCoy2010: Antonio Brown, Ndamukong Suh, Geno Atkins2011: Cam Newton, JJ Watt, Von Miller2012: Russell Wilson, Bobby Wagner, Luke Kuechly2013: David Bakhtiari, Le’Veon Bell, DeAndre Hopkins2014: Aaron Donald, Khalil Mack, C.J. Mosley This game may be a loss for the Jets, but never has a loss felt so much like a win. Not only did Jets fans get an exceptional performance from their rookie quarterback, but the team is now 3rd in draft position and the Patriots have been kicked out of position for a first round bye. For those fans who are looking toward the draft, this must feel like a win-win-win. So let’s take a look at the top performers:Bronze Star: K Jason Myers (1 for 1 on field goals)The Jets lost another one, so the kicker is back and....I’m totally kidding, Myers was a train wreck this week and I would retroactively remove stickers for this type of performance if that were something we do here. Now I just have to fill this out a little bit so that it looks approximately feature length Brent Qvale Jersey , otherwise I won’t be able to sell the ruse. You can skip down to the next one. Seriously, this rambling isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. All right, it’s your time, do what you want. Okay, I think it’s long enough now, onto the real stars.Bronze Star: WR Robby Anderson (7 catches, 96 yards, 1 TD)Robby has been extremely hot or cold this season, but this was definitely one of the hot games. In a game in which the Jets receivers, linemen, and running backs all failed to show up, Robby was really the only target for a red hot Sam Darnold. If there had been even one other option on offense in this game, the Jets probably win. However, Herndon remains a raw rookie, Enunwa struggles with health and consistency,Kearse is on his way out, Roberts is a returner, and both young backs showed very little. Fortunately for fans of decent football, Robby provided a plausible target and rode the great game from Darnold to the tune of 7 catches and 96 yards.Silver Star: DL Henry Anderson (3 tackles, 3 sacks)Boy, was this a big game for Anderson. The famed Ironman delivered 3 sacks after recording the same number in his first 3 seasons. How rare is it for a Jet to record 3 sacks in a game? According to the vastly superior stat work of Yonkers, the last time this happened was in 2015. While this speaks more to how awful the Jets have been at finding an elite pass rusher than how rare this is in a game (I noticed several from opponents, including 4 or more sack games as well), it really was a great performance for Anderson. He got a bit lucky as the refs may have bailed him out of a sloppy tackle on Watson, but at the end of the day Womens Marcus Maye Jersey , he still dominated and helped keep the Jets in the game. Yet there was another player who had even more impact, and that player was....Gold Star: QB Sam Darnold (24 of 38 for 253 yards, 2 TDs, 6 rushes for 35 yards)This is the performance I’ve waited for to get excited about Darnold. He had a good game in an easy win against Indianapolis, but this was the first game in which it truly felt like Darnold was not only a positive influence on the offense, but that he was carrying the team. Though he had a few risky, ill-advised throws, you won’t find any game this year without a couple of those (unless you’re Philip Rivers), and he more than made up for that with some incredible improvisational skills that the Jets haven’t seen out of their quarterbacks in years. Hopefully this will be the first part of his development that they will discuss while preparing his gold jacket ceremony outside of the new Sam Darnold atrium at the Hall of Fame in Canton. So there you have it, fifteen weeks in and the table stands:Jamal Adams 18 points (4 gold, 2 silver, 2 bronze)Jason Myers 11 points (2 gold, 2 silver, 1 bronze)Avery Williamson 6 points (1 gold, 1 silver, 1 bronze)Sam Darnold 5 points (1 gold, 1 silver)Henry Anderson 5 points (1 gold, 1 silver)Morris Claiborne 5 points (2 silver, 2 bronze)Andre Roberts 5 points (1 gold, 1 silver)Quincy Enunwa 4 points (1 gold, 1 bronze)Darron Lee 4 points (2 silver)Trumaine Johnson 4 point (1 gold, 1 bronze)Deontay Burnett 3 points (1 gold)Isaiah Crowell 3 points (1 gold)Leonard Williams 3 points (1 silver, 1 bronze)Jermaine Kearse 2 points (1 silver)Bilal Powell 2 points (2 bronze)Robby Anderson 2 points (2 bronze)Darryl Roberts 1 point (1 bronze)Jordan Jenkins 1 point (1 bronze)