ESPN draft pompadour Mel Kiper Jr. came down from Mount Bristol on Thursday morning to regale us with his expertise, and let's just say he's not high on this year's quarterback group—headlined by Oregon's Marcus Mariota and Florida State's Jameis Winston—as an instant fix for a woebegone franchise. (Looking at you, the Jets.)

"There is really no franchise quarterback in this draft," Kiper said on a conference call. "Even though Mariota could go No. 1 [overall], he's not Andrew Luck. He's not in that elite-of-elite category."

This is obviously going to be of little comfort to fans who want to see the Jets take Mariota or Winston in the first round, which Kiper thinks they'll do anyway. But what's more important than picking a quarterback in the top five or six is that the Jets get the right quarterback, no matter when they take him. And identifying the right quarterback is obviously going to depend on who's wearing the pants as head coach and general manager, especially now that owner Woody Johnson has signaled that Rex Ryan and John Idzik could get canned come Black Monday.

Chip Kelly:

Mariota is everything a team could want in a QB

Kiper does have Mariota at No. 1 on his big board, with Winston at No. 6. But he advises fans and teams to proceed with caution and to be patient—a quality that's often in short supply for many NFL fans these days, in part because draft analysis like Kiper's is often viewed as some sort of immediate cure-all. And it's not like Kiper is always right with these things, most famously when he compared JaMarcus Russell to John Elway just after the Raiders drafted Russell No. 1 overall in 2007:

Kiper's own analysis of Winston indicates what a tricky thing this draft business can be. Winston, he said, would have been a franchise quarterback last year, but Winston was not yet eligible to enter the draft at that time. Now?

"Now, he's a third-year sophomore, and you saw his year: inconsistent, some bad reads, some inaccurate throws, struggles, interceptions," Kiper said. "His touchdown-to-interception ratio [24/17] was way, way down from what it was last year [40/10]. Then you have the off-field issues. So all of a sudden, he's not a franchise guy anymore."

On Mariota, Kiper said: "Mariota is a quarterback with a lot of talent; I'm talking about ability in terms of running with the football, in terms of making any throw you want him to take. Now, is he as precise as you need to be, coming out of an offense where he's throwing into huge windows, and guys wide open? Some inaccuracy issues ... in the NFL, you've got to be precise."

Kiper went on to say he thought Mariota could benefit from something like a redshirt year to get acclimated to playing in the NFL.

Dom Cosentino may be reached at dcosentino@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @domcosentino. Find NJ.com Jets on Facebook.