Yes, it's totally ok that we differ in how Fitz will perform next season. If he comes back, I hope that you're correct and he will play lights out. I just don't think he will based on history. He has a longer history of not playing well with a variety of teams and a variety of offenses. It's also totally ok that we disagree that the FO "doesn't even know. I think they hope how things will go, and think that they have a good idea of how things would work out, but no one knows for certain. Fitz could come back and with being another year older and last year's success, he could be overconfident, force the ball more against the better defenses and wind up with a lot more interceptions and much worse play than last year. He could come back and suffer a season-ending (career-ending at his age) injury in game one. By sitting last year and learning from Fitz, Geno could finally have realized how he was pissing his career away with bonehead plays and not studying/working hard enough, and changed that over the offseason. With greater maturity, knowledge of the offense, stronger work ethic, and better weapons around him, his physical abilities could more than make up for whatever mental deficiencies he still has. The fact that he has a stronger and more accurate arm than Fitz could compensate for his deficiencies and even have him help the offense more than Fitz. It's not like Fitz was setting the league on fire last season. Yes, the Jets won more than they lost, but they struggled at times, largely due to Fitz' play. I did wonder how Geno might have fared since he had played well in TC and early preseason and looked improved. I will root for Geno until he is no longer on the team. That's no less than I do for any other Jets player who isn't a total asshat. I'm not selling out Fitz. I've never been a fan of his. He was the most logical veteran to sign last season, and I'm glad the Jets did, but he's a JAG and limited. He always has been and always will be. I think he got greedy when he saw what suddenly other younger QBs were getting. First and foremost, I'm a Jets fan, and I want what's best for the team long term. That isn't Fitz. At best, he could give us another exciting season of football, but the team wind up short of the playoffs again. He certainly isn't worth paying a ton of money to next season to be a backup. With the money the Jets may have to pay him to sign, they could possibly shore up the OL or TE corps with a TC cut or two, or have that money next season to help them sign another FA or two that could help them. Call me crazy, but why would it be surprising that Geno could still be capable of playing at a decent level? If he was as bad as many posters here say (and as you have said), it doesn't matter how cheap he is, the Jets would have cut bait with him, and used some of their cap space to sign another veteran QB. A couple of months ago a QB whose name escapes me at the moment was rumored to be a possible Jet, but the Jets had no interest and he signed elsewhere for only $2 million. That the Jets didn't sign him and unceremoniously dump Geno, and have been praising Geno during OTAs and the mini-camp, says that he has a place in the NFL. He has physical talent. The fact that he's been making good reads and decisions so far also shows that he isn't as dumb or have as low a football IQ as some said. Knowledge and preparation (hard work and study) boost confidence and poise. Confidence and poise help prevent people from panicking under pressure. Yes, the probability is greater than Fitz would play better than Geno, but that doesn't mean it will be the reality. Personally, I'd love it if Fitz re-signs, Bowles decides to open the starting QB spot to competition between Fitz and Geno and Geno beats Fitz out. I also think the Jets have more to gain long term by going with Geno this season rather than Fitz. If Geno starts and plays well, he could be a decent stop gap until Hack or another young QB is ready to play, and then be a quality backup if the Jets decide to keep him. If he plays well but the Jets decide not to keep him for whatever reason, he would be almost certain to sign elsewhere and would possible give the Jets a mid-round comp pick. If he doesn't play well, I don't think the end result would be appreciably worse than if Fitz started. I could be wrong, however, but even if so, it wouldn't be the end of the world. It would be another season of struggle. It's not like we haven't seen a lot of those as Jets fans. The Jets would no longer have any doubts about Geno and they'd get higher draft picks in the 2017 draft, which should only help them in building the team going forward.
Yes, Bowles and Mac are basing their professional opinions on what they see every time one of these guys gets on the field and attended a meeting, and the fact that they haven't gotten rid of Geno says something positive about Geno. They could have gotten rid of him and signed that QB a couple of months ago that many wanted to sign that wound up signing elsewhere for only $2 million. That would only have been a few hundred thousand $s more than Geno. Even with their professional opinions, they don't really know will happen. They don't have crystal balls.
You are absolutely correct - they don't have crystal balls and they don't really know what will happen. But I can guarantee you this - they know more than you, I, or any other message board Lombardi.
Fingers crossed for their sake They both came highly recommended But we all know GMs and Coaches get canned when things go south
I expect this hard line in the sand to continue from the Fitz camp until TC. The music has stopped and there is only one chair for Fitz but he doesn't seem to like that chair, but says he does. Fitz better be praying that some starter becomes injured. If that happens the game changes. But that stuff usually doesn't happen until preseason games start
my issue with this is in regards to Smith playing against tough defenses is that its only 31 games, basically only 2 seasons of data, and each one of those teams would've played against Geno Smith, some twice, which no doubt would've improved their defensive ranking. its a chicken and the egg argument. Did Geno Smith struggle because he had to play against top ranked defenses or were these defenses' top ranked because they got to play against a terrible struggling Geno Smith? I won't argue against the idea that Fitzpatrick is one lucky dude though. I swear that guy must've kissed someone's ass in a previous life because everywhere he goes something wacky happens to the starter and he ends up with the starting job. Geno getting knocked the F out in the locker room should not have been a surprise, just another in the long line of Fitzpatrick's dark magic
Playing Geno once, even twice, in a season would not be enough to make a team a top-rated pass defense. It might not hurt their ranking any, and probably helped, but those rankings would have been based over a number of games (and more likely over the entire season, since those statistics would have been compiled in retrospect), not just their games vs the Jets.
right but the difference between 8th place and 20th place in something as specific as passing defense is not very big. Playing Geno Smith twice and getting something like 5 INTs total would certainly make a difference. playing him once and having a game where a QB goes for a paltry 150 yards and 2 Ints, in today's day where an average passing game is 250 yards could make a difference in your ranking too
This is true, but there are certain teams you should expect to roflstomp, especially as a 10-6 team. The titans were 3-13. The Cowboys were bad as well and had a backup QB but very good defense. The Giants had a terrible defense, Fitz should have lit them up. The Jets were a little over rated (along with Fitz) last year because of the soft schedule.
It could, but we'd need to see a list of those teams, what their ranking was prior to playing the Jets, what Geno's stats were for those games, and what those teams' rankings were following playing the Jets to know for sure how playing Geno affected their ranking. Don't forget that Geno had some good games and some of those may have actually hurt a team's rankings. In addition, if he had Fitz' luck, his W-L record and play might look a lot better.
So in order to figure out how a teams defensive ranking was effected by playing against Geno we need to go look at his stats against those teams and do some math to figure out where they would have been ranked but for playing Geno? Really. _
aint nobody got time for that but- in the list it ranks defenses simply by opponents passer rating and it focuses on when Geno Smith played a top 12 defense in opponent passer rating. We see in 2013 just for example Pittsburgh was ranked at that cut off, 12th, with an opponents passer rating of 82.7. But Tennessee was the cut off for 13th, just a close shave away at 83.3 https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/opponent-average-team-passer-rating?date=2014-02-02 Geno Smith was 19-34 with 0TDs and 2INTs for a passer rating of 48 in that pittsburgh game. One of the best performances that Pittsburgh pass D had all year. So that's at least 1 team that wouldn't be considered a "top defense" if they hadn't got the opportunity to go against Geno Smith. Baltimore, ranked 11th at 82.2 opponent passer rating that season, just 1 rating point away from finishing 13th or below, had their best defensive performance by far when they faced Geno Smith with a passer rating of 22.3 .[Smith 9-22 for 127 yards, 0TDs 2 INTs, in that game] that's probably another team that would've finished outside the top 12 if they faced an average QB on that day and not Geno Smith. I could go on, New England is an interesting fringe one ranked 9th and 10th respectively in 2013 and 2014 and fortunate to play Geno Smith twice, there are others but I'll leave it like that. Its a chicken and the egg thing and ranking by passer rating is questionable sometimes anyway
Of course, but if folks are looking to rationalize an irrational position, they'll point to anything. Clearly, playing Geno improved teams defensive rankings. _
Okay, wow that's totally my fault. I looked at the wrong score for that game, I apologize. Of course I put Buffalo in the teams that the Jets should have stomped category as well as the Eagles and Giants. The fact still remains that Fitz had a relatively easy schedule based on the opponents' passing defenses. Team: passing D rank Cleveland: 22nd Colts: 24th Eagles: 28th Miami: 21st Buffalo: 19th Patriots: 17th Redskins: 25th Jags: 29th Houston: 3rd Giants: last Titans: 7th Dallas: 5th Average: 19th I left out Oakland and counted Buff, Miami and NE twice. So on average Fitz faced below average defenses and still performed mediocre or below average in most categories. Cutting him loose is not going to change much. Next year the Jets face a much tougher schedule and much tougher defenses. I'd be willing to bet he would regress big time in his TDs and INTs, although his leadership is the big thing that makes me like him. He's not worth big $$$, however.
