New York Jets general manager Darren Mougey turned heads last week when the organization canceled a top-30 visit with Texas Tech edge rusher David Bailey.

Considered the best pure pass rusher in the 2026 NFL draft, Bailey’s name is one of the likely favorites to land with the Jets at the second overall pick on Thursday. He’ll be in competition, though, with Ohio State phenom Arvell Reese, who is considered the best prospect of the class by many.

That’s what made the cancellation of the meeting with Bailey so peculiar. If New York is truly split on where they should go at two, why cancel a final meeting with one of the players who is part of the discussion?

Some have even been led to believe that the Jets were showing they had made up their mind — that Reese would be the pick over Bailey due to his higher upside and potential.

That isn’t the case, though, according to Mougey.

Jets shrug off top-30 visits

Speaking to reporters Tuesday morning at his annual pre-draft press conference, Mougey made it clear that people shouldn’t put too much weight on top-30 visits, especially compared to the rest of the league.

“I would say, for us, when we do top-30s, every single player and case is different,” Mougey said. “Sometimes I want this player to meet with our player engagement department, sometimes I want this player to meet with our sports performance, sometimes it’s purely medical, sometimes it’s a recruiting process, sometimes it’s a smokescreen.”

The focus with a question like that is obviously centered around the team’s scouting of Bailey as a player, both on and off the field. While his pass-rushing skills were easily the best in college football last season, there were other off-field questions that the prospect had.

Late in the 2025 season, Bailey got into a physical altercation with a game photographer. In 2024, he stomped on an opposing player. Both instances can be chalked up to Bailey being an intense player in need of discipline.

For the Jets to decline a top-30 meeting to potentially address those questions raised eyebrows around the league.

“In regards to David, we had good touchpoints with him at the combine,” Mougey said. “We went to his pro day and had a good dinner with him, and we were just kind of juggling our 30 and how to use them, and I wouldn’t look too much into a cancellation, because there were other ones that we may have changed as well.”

But is Mougey really telling the truth that top-30 visits don’t matter for the Jets?

Recent history tells us that may not be the case.

2025 suggests otherwise

Ahead of the 2025 draft last year, the Jets met with both their first-round pick (right tackle Armand Membou) and their second-round pick (tight end Mason Taylor). Safety Malachi Moore was also brought in for a visit and was drafted in the fourth round by the team.

If last year is any indication, top-30 visits matter to an executive like Mougey, even if he won’t publicly say so.

There is also an odd part of Mougey’s answer regarding Bailey’s cancellation. Unlike Reese, Bailey has some skeletons in her closet that teams are going to have to address at some point.

Why wouldn’t the Jets take extra time to talk to the player about it — even if they had met so many times before? This is the time when organizations need to be thorough. For the Jets to simply say they have seen enough is rare for a team not focusing on a quarterback.

It means either they are dead set on Reese being the pick, or they believe they can get the off-field concerns to a minimum with Bailey.

Either way, the Jets’ top-30 visit and their explanation for the cancellation make for an interesting few days heading into draft night.