Jets general manager Darren Mougey addressed the media Monday leading up to the 2025 NFL Draft, which will begin Thursday night April 24 at 8 p.m. EDT in Green Bay, WI.
Mougey said he likes where the roster is ahead of the draft where the Jets hold eight selections including No. 7 overall.
"I think it's a pretty good draft," he said. "There's all this talk like it's a good draft, it's a bad draft. We really won't know until two years from now and we can assess the talent and what they've done in the NFL. I feel like there are some good players throughout the draft in different rounds, but we feel like there are some talented players who can help us."
Below is an outline of how Mougey has been tackling the leadup to his first draft as a GM.
Leadoff
Following the NFL Annual League Meeting, the Jets were one of the NFL's first three teams to begin their offseason program since teams with new head coaches are allowed to begin two weeks earlier than the rest of the league.
Mougey said "there's a good energy" in the building with the players back, and a great turnout for the voluntary sessions. But the start of the program also marked the first in-person draft meetings for Mougey and the college scouts.
"We would be up in the draft room -- all the college scouts, the analytics department, AG [Aaron Glenn], myself," he said. "We'd have the coordinator, we'd bring the position coach up. Let's say it was the running backs that day. We'd start with top running backs, go right down the list, talk about the player. The scouts would talk about the player, analytics would talk about the player, the coach would talk about the player. We'd watch some film, we'd watch the Pro Day, we'd have good dialogue, we'd work down the list and it would take the whole day to really stack the list appropriately.
"The next day we'd go through a new position and as we'd go through all those positions, that's kind how you build a board and we'd stack the board."
Mougey, who said he's looking for smart, aggressive, tough and resilient players, addinged the board is pretty much set at this point.
On Deck
Next for Mougey are medical and legal meetings.
"We'll be in the draft room with all the doctors revisiting a handful of the players' medicals to make sure we have the appropriate tags and know their medical situation," he said.
From a legal perspective, Mougey will meet with the team's security group and the scouts to review past or pending legal matters.
"It's a huge piece of the evaluation process where they may end up in a board, a stack or a tiebreaker as another piece of it," he said. "It's important that we fully exhaust the character and know what type of person is walking in. We spend a lot of time in those meetings talking about that. It's a credit to the scouts and the coaches through the process getting around these players and getting a good feel to see if they're going to be a fit in our building."
In the Hole
In the leadup to Thursday night, Mougey will call the other 31 teams around the league to gauge their interest in trading up or back.
"Typically you get more, 'We're willing to move back,' but we never really know how it's going to go until the horn goes off," he said.
The final item to check off is to follow up with coaches and scouts to go over different scenarios.
"I'll say 'This player or that player?' " Mougey said. " 'Are you comfortable with these guys? What's the vision like? We bring this player in, how does he fit in the team? What is his role going to be?' Some of these coaches have had zooms or top-30 visits since we last had their position meetings, so we'll follow up."
