Pre-draft rumors flew that the New York Jets were trying to trade down. However, news came out after the draft the team was trying to trade up into the second round,.

General Manager Mike Maccagnan confirmed the Jets had interest in moving into the second round but wouldn’t say for who — though reports suggest it was for Georgia receiver Mecole Hardman. The team had no second-round selections after trading up for Sam Darnold in 2018.

The Chiefs selected Hardman with the 56th selection.

“I think sometimes if you have a pick within the round, it’s a lot easier to move up in the round,” Maccagnan said on NFL Media insider Ian Rapoport’s podcast. “But if you’re trying to get back into the second round and you don’t have a second-round pick per se in that year’s draft, it makes it a little more difficult. There’s a lot of situations where we had talked to teams and quite a few scenarios where teams opted to not want to make a trade and felt good about the players on the board and took the player respectively. But that’s part of the draft process you go through.”

The Jets wound up staying put in the first round, selecting Alabama defensive tackle Quinnen Williams despite receiving calls from other teams.

“It was never a situation where we were trying to get out of the third pick,” Maccagnan told Rapoport. “We actually felt very comfortable being there.”