The Jets delayed their first selection of the draft's second night Friday for a second time. The first time was late Thursday night when they traded up with San Francisco to take Indiana WR Omar Cooper Jr. The second time came when the Jets were on the clock for their 44th overall selection and executed a tradedown with Detroit, getting the Lions' second- and fourth-round picks.
Then the Green & White used that second-rook selection, 50th overall, to go to the Hoosier well again, this time selecting Indiana cornerback D'Angelo Ponds.
Ponds has a smaller frame at 5-9 and 182 pounds but a big heart, which he turned to in assisting the Hoosiers to their sterling 16-0 record and national title.
"I would say I'm an aggressive, scrappy corner," he told Jets reporters Friday night. "Can play inside, can play outside, just a guy who can attack, who can cover a man, cover his own coverage. You really get a player that can do it all.
And can do it with that proverbial chip on his shoulder.
"Yeah, I have been doubted all my whole life," he said. "Basically, it's like everything I got, I earned it. Nobody gave it to me. Kind of how I've been doing it my whole life."
"Ponds is a productive perimeter cornerback trapped in a smaller body," NFL.com's Lance Zierlein wrote, "but he's not lacking in confidence or coverage tenacity. He's tremendously competitive and winning seems to follow him at each stop. ... Ponds is a likely Day 2 pick who will be an above-average starting nickelback in the NFL."
A lot like his new head coach, Aaron Glenn, who had a compact body but an All-Pro's heart as a Jets first-round pick in 1994 and player through 2001 in his storied journey to the Jets' HC office.
Ponds had a 2025 to remember. In his 15 starts, he led IU's defense with 10 pass breakups and added 61 tackles, 4 TFLs, 2 INTs (one returned for a touchdown), a forced fumble and a blocked kick. He also had one catch on offense and one punt return, for a TD, on specials. He was named a second-team AP All-American, a first-team All-Big Ten for the second straight year, and defensive MVP of both the Peach Bowl and Rose Bowl.
The Jets had four picks of Indiana players in the AFL Drafts of the early-to-mid Sixties, but none played in green and white. Ponds is just the fourth Hoosier to be drafted by the Jets since then, and the first, along with Cooper, in over a half-century, or since the arrival of the most productive IU player to be drafted by the Jets, DT Carl Barzilauskas, who was taken sixth overall in the 1974 draft and made 48 starts.
"I think it's going to be great. We had great battles at Indiana," he said of practice matchups with Cooper. "We're going to have great battles at New York. It's going yo be a great one. He's a great teammate, and, oh, we all win a lot of games."
Ponds also is the first position player taken with the 50th overall pick in any draft in franchise history. The only other No. 50 was Syracuse K Fred Mautino, taken by the New York Titans in 1961.
