The Jets have a serious quarterback mess, one that could imperil their season, and they have no one to blame but themselves. Let's be specific: This one's on Rex Ryan and Mike Tannenbaum. Ryan believes the Jets are a today team - at 21 positions, he's right - but they have a tomorrow quarterback. He knew there would be growing pains with Mark Sanchez, but Ryan inflated expectations with his big talk, telling everybody he was going to compete for a championship and grow a franchise quarterback at the same time. For an NFL coach, that's a want-your-cake-and-eat-it-too situation. It happened last year with Joe Flacco in Baltimore, right in front of Ryan's eyes, but that was the perfect storm, an anomaly. Right now, the only thing the Jets have is a dark cloud, a rookie quarterback who has lost his way on a team that shouldn't have to wait for him to get back on course. Problem is, they don't have a viable alternative - at least not in Ryan's mind. For the sake of trying to win a game, he should've pulled Sanchez from Sunday's five-interception debacle against the Bills, but the Jets' first-year coach felt Sanchez gave them the best chance. Evidently, he doesn't have much faith in Kellen Clemens. Sanchez was rattled, resembling a pitcher who wasn't going to find the strike zone with a compass and a map. For the first time in his career, he looked hopeless. The situation screamed for bullpen help; not a permanent change, just a spark off the bench. Ryan admitted he considered it, but his non-action was an indictment of Clemens. If they don't feel Clemens is good enough to step into a tight game and lead a scoring drive, why is he on the team? If that's the case, Tannenbaum made a mistake by not acquiring a more experienced insurance policy. The Jets went into the season with the youngest quarterback depth chart in the league, a grand total of eight career starts - all by Clemens. Why take a go-for-broke mentality, buying expensive free agents and trading for Braylon Edwards, if you're going to leave yourselves vulnerable at the most important position? Makes no sense. It's like buying a Porsche with cheap tires. What's the point? Publicly, the players are backing Sanchez, who has eight interceptions in his last three starts, but they will lose patience if the turnovers continue to mount. The veterans tasted success with that 3-0 start - and Ryan's bravado made it tastier - and they don't want to deal with growing pains by the rookie quarterback. They want to win - now. The Jets have lost three straight and the margin for error is shrinking. Now Sanchez has to venture into Oakland's Black Hole, where the wacko fans probably will be taunting him with copies of his GQ photo spread. If Ryan stays too long with an ineffective Sanchez, he could lose the team. Ryan reiterated yesterday that Sanchez will remain the starter, but he said they "need to take some things off his plate." It was a tacit acknowledgement that they gave him too much too soon, forgetting he was a rookie who started only 16 games in college. So now they probably will scale back the game plan, which could mean fewer motions and shifts - the hallmarks of Brian Schottenheimer's offense. A simpler offense will be easier to defend, but they'd rather go simple with Sanchez than status quo with Clemens. "We have to realize this isn't a guy that's played 20 years in the league," Ryan said of his $50 million rookie. "He's got an unbelievable amount of talent. We all see it. We all know what he's going to be in the future, but we've got to be smart with him." In other words, they have to manage Sanchez better. For all his talent, he's still a neophyte. He locks on his first read. He forces balls into coverage. He takes bad sacks. And he has to learn to throw to someone other than Edwards. Most of the great quarterbacks endured similar growing pains, but Sanchez stepped into an unusual situation - the first rookie in nearly 25 years to start from Day 1 on a team coming off a winning season. And he's doing it for a coach who doesn't believe in cautious optimism.
Except for QB we are. I think they saw Sanchez has some poise and presence, won a couple of games and got a bit cocky, treating him like he's a vet when there's a lot of stuff he hasn't seen and done yet. Now they realize they can't just plug him in where Favre was and expect him to pull the same load, he needs to be helped along. Anyone who thought we were going to cruise to a division title with a rookie QB was kidding themselves. There's no point in putting Clemens in, he's here in case Sanchez gets hurt or just couldn't play at all, which so far isn't the case. Clemens isn't the future and he's not an experienced vet who can save the day, he's a backup QB period. If we had a Vinny, Chad or Garcia behind him maybe you put that guy in to try and pull out the Bills game, but what is gained by throwing Clemens out there to make more dumb mistakes? Might as well let Sanchez do it.
I disagree with him on the Jets having a serious QB mess. The Jets have a serious coaching mess at this point. If they were working Sanchez in the way they should be with a rookie QB they would be 4-2 right now and possibly 5-1. The 5-1 would take a functional defense to shut down Miami just once in the 4th quarter on Monday night which it failed to do. I see the last three games as an indictment of the Jets coaching staff and their ability to get the players ready to play. That whirling maelstrom that started in the 4th quarter on Monday night against the Fins and has never stopped building since then is indicative of a failure of leadership at the highest levels in the Jets locker-room and that's on Ryan, Pettine and Schottenheimer. That anybody would point at the kid QB and say that this is his fault is unbelievable. Ryan and Pettine and Schottenheimer need to get on the same page and they need to start acting like the leaders of the Jets because if they don't nobody underneath them is going to be able to fix the problem.
Last time I looked with Brett Farve at QB and the division and a first round bye on the line this team with most of the same players and a veteran QB went into fetal position. This team has many more issues than a rookie QB.
I agree mostly but he's still basing this article off 1 game. His line about finding someone else besides Braylon may be true but with Cotch out and having no rhythm with Clowney he must have felt forced or was told to get him the ball. I do like the idea of simplifying things, just like vs Houston. I think Mark played too good for his own good in the first few games, he must've given Schotty the confidence he could handle the more complicated chapters of the playbook.
Yep. Coaching is a real problem on this team and has been except for 2002 and 2006. In both of those years we saw a coach step up and take the brunt of the media attention off of the team and onto himself, and hold players accountable for their failures and in both cases the Jets over-performed in response. This year we saw Ryan do the same thing for 3 games and guess what? The Jets over-performed for 3 games. Now he's defensive and unhappy and the team is in a shell. Guess why that's happening?
Its more than coaching. I herd Rhodes after the Miami game on the radio basically say that now that people were off the Jets they would respond better. If you break that down what that really means is when the Jets are expected to win and should win guys on our team fail to perform up to their ability and make big plays. When they aren't expected to win they do. That is the absolute definition of SOJ in my mind. This team has talent but you need talent and coaching and you need talent that can play under pressure. The talent on this team seems to get awfully tight in big spots. That was true with Mangini and it was true the last two weeks when expectations changed. We may need a little more house cleaning and maybe some of our more talented players if we can get value for them?
Because Favre shit the bed and the coaching staff's hands were tied. I look at the team and see a solid O-line, good RBs (2 Pro Bowlers), now quality WRs, good TE; on D we have a good line although Jenkins is now a big blow, quality LBs, a good secondary, maybe the best CB in the game. Our specials are mostly solid, I don't see any reason this team isn't built to win now except we have a rookie QB and coach with no veteran QB to come in and stabilize things when it goes wrong.
Perhaps if we really were a win now team, we'd have a win now QB instead of a project taking snaps. The entire "win now" thing was undermined by not bringing in a decent, serviceable, VETERAN QB during TC. The experiment is blowing up in the lab and now we're in the unenviable position of not being able to bench the kid because there's no one the CS trusts enough on the sidelines to take over? WTF is up with our FO/CS? Shitpoor planning once again..
I think they felt they could win despite the QB and maybe they still can, we're 3-3 with wins over a couple good teams, we're not 0-6. A bit early to say it's "blowing up in the lab", although I agree a veteran QB would have been a good move going into camp. Kind of odd to go in with all guys who have little or no experience with the rest of the team being veterans.
If Jones fumbled 5 times and we lost would you say it wasn't his fault. Sure Sanchez has a lot on his shoulders and he's a rookie - but he's accountable for the football . He threw 5 picks . not the CS . Bottom line it was a bad game , he'll learn from it and get better.
Sanchez is playing with a guy at WR he's only been around for 2 weeks. The other guy (clowney) is a #3 WR at best. They shouldn't have sent him out there throwing the ball 29 times in the wind, with the WR's he had. Yeah he made some bad reads, there were some tipped passes, etc. But coaches should coach around the fact that Cochery was out and they're playing a rookie in a windy game. The biggest mess right now will be losing Jenkins. We've got two above average RB's, we can get around having a rookie QB, but we can't get around losing our best defensive lineman.
Ben did fine as a rookie too. If you really have a championship caliber team, you should be able to make a run with a rookie QB. You will not win the SB, but you have no excuse to not make the playoffs at least, and even get a high seed. It is not having a cake and eating it too, although I don't know what the fuck else you do with a cake but eat it anyway. He wants Rex to just have a cake sitting around and not eat it? Has this man seen Ryan? Rex doesn't miss many chances to eat cakes.
Sanchez went into the game looking for Edwards, and he did lock onto him, while I agree Keller was just plain awful. Sanchez needs to learn to check down, especially when Leon is in the backfield. He could have avoided at least INT #4 as Leon had nothing but green in front of him on the flat. Vitrually every great QB has been benched at some point. Favre is the rare exception. Sanchez should have been pulled, if not after INT #3, certainly after #4. Getting pulled when a QB is lost out there is normal for most rookie QB's. This is the only fault I find with the CS as far as the Bills game goes. I think pulling Sanchez would have helped, not hurt his development. Had they put Clemens in, the Jest would have won, and Sanchez could start the next game, no issues. I agree with 95% of the article, but there are some tools here that think I WANT Sanchez to fail.... funny stuff. I was a Jets fan before most of them were born. I hope this kid works out, I really really do. This franchise has waited for a Super Bowl quality QB to come along for almost 40 years now, and I've been here through each and every QB that just never was quite good enough. Letting Sanchez watch for a game or two isn't go to hurt him.... unless he isn't made of the right stuff to begin with.
That I agree with, we saw him too often staring down his receivers. That is easily corrected when he gets his timing down with his WR's. Once that is done we'll have something else to complain about but it won't be the QB.
If I was in the Bills secondary, I would have been licking my lips as other than the HBs, Sanchez only threw to Keller and Edwards, not too difficult to make jumps and reads on only 2 legit targets is it? Give Sanchez plays that he has a chance to make and get his confidence up, or his performances are going to yo-yo between terrible and pathetic.
