The Jets stepped to the plate right near the top of the order at Thursday’s first round of the 2026 NFL Draft and selected Texas Tech edge rusher David Bailey with the second overall selection on the draft’s opening night.
“It’s surreal to me, man,. It’s a great experience. It’s an awesome opportunity,” Bailey said from the draft stage in downtown Pittsburgh after hugging NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and getting his first Jets hat and traditional No. 1 jersey in green and white. “I’m grateful to all the fans who came out here tonight. I just want to be a sponge, soak up everything and make me the best player I can be to help this organization. I think they want to go in the right direction, and I’m just ready to work.”
In the weeks leading up to the pick, draft analysts and Jets Nation all seemed to spin themselves in knots over the Jets pick. Most seemed to agree that, after Las Vegas chose Indiana QB Fernando Mendoza first overall, the Jets would go with the best edge rusher. But would it be Bailey and his gaudy production for the Red Raiders or Arvell Reese with his sky-high ceiling for Ohio State? Mock drafts and expert value boards went back and forth on the two candidates almost daily.
Production won out and Bailey (6-4, 251) provided plenty of that with his 29 total sacks over four college seasons. His first three seasons came at Stanford, where he played 32 games as a part-time starter but a full-time QB harasser, racking up 14.5 sacks.
Then he matched that total last year in his one season at Tech when he amassed 14.5 sacks, tying for the FBS lead, and 19.5 tackles for loss, second-most in FBS. One platform pegged his 81 QB pressures for Tech as the best among college defenders. After the season he was named a first-team All-American and the Big 12 DL of the Year.
Bailey was pumped, shortly after his slectionm, to tell Jets reporters what a sack does for him.
“Oh, man, I’m so glad you asked me about that feeling,” he said. “That feeling, it’s like no other.. … I have a lot of motivations for why I play the game and that’s one of them, that feeling when you get a sack and the crowd is, you know, on your side, especially during a home game. But regardless home or away, it’s one of the best feelings.”
He also wowed at the combine, turning his 40-yard dash in 4.50 seconds, second-fastest among DEs and edge rushers behind only Reese’s 4.46.
And there is his commitment to skill work that helped sell GM Darren Mougey and HC Aaron Glenn. Bailey has shown the ability to develop or improve a skill through relentless training.
Bailey is the sixth player taken by the Jets out of Texas Tech in the common-draft era, the highest-drafted Red Raider by the Green & White, and the first Tech player selected since the most recent one, TE Jace Amaro, came to the Jets in Round 2, 49th overall, in the 204 draft. The most productive Jets player drafted from Tech was CB Marcus Coleman in the fifth round in 1996.
The second overall pick has underperformed for the Jets, with high hopes but limited impact from the three previous 2s: WR Johnny “Lam” Jones in 1980, RB Blair Thomas in 1990 and QB Zach Wilson in 2021.
But that obviously is not the plan with Bailey, who will come in as the highest defensive player selected by the Jets since 1967 and the first Jets edge rusher taken in the first round since the man he could be teamed with to come flying off the edge this season, Will McDonald IV, selected 15th overall in 2023 out of Iowa State.
As Mougey said earlier in the week about the much-discussed cancellation of Bailey’s “30 visit” to 1 Jets Drive, “Sometimes that’s a smokescreen.”
One reason for the smoke and the cancellation was how familiar many members of the Jets staff were familiar with Bailey because they saw him in action when they at Stanford with him from 2022-24. The list includes Thomas Merkle (three seasons as a graduate assistant and quality control coach), Al Netter (two seasons as co-OL coach), Matthew Sargent (one season as a GA).
