Content available exclusively for subscribers
New Jersey – It’s probably a long shot that Ryan Fitzpatrick is at the Jets mini-camp this week as the two sides are dug in . . .
NFL Network insider Ian Rapoport tweeted, “Update on the #Jets situation with Ryan Fitzpatrick: Nothing. … Just nothing. Doesn’t seem like things will change heading into minicamp.”
This clearly came from Jimmy Sexton or one of his cohorts at Creative Artists Agency.
I agree. The Jets and Fitzpatrick are still light years apart, and this could take a while.
In my opinion, the Jets don’t want to up the offer now and peak too early.
If they up the offer now, six weeks before training camp starts, there is a good chance they have will have to up in again.
And it’s clear that Fitzpatrick isn’t going to be at the mandatory mini-camp which starts tomorrow and runs through Thursday, so they might as well wait.
Once the veteran minicamp ends, the players leave the team until the start of training camp in late July.
So there is no reason to raise the offer now.
The only reason an earlier offer might come to pass is if the business side, led by Woody Johnson and Neil Glat, feels that a team sans their likely starting quarterback is killing ticket sales. Surely, there are fans that don’t like that uncertainty, and might be hesitant to ante up the money not knowing the QB for sure.
However, it would be a mistake to up the offer for marketing reasons. Marketing and football shouldn’t mix. It’s a toxic brew. When you make personnel decision for marketing reasons, it often doesn’t work out.
The Darrelle Revis signing was clearly partly done for marketing and PR reasons.
One beat writer I’m friendly with keeps telling me, “It made the Jets relevant again.”
Relevancy comes with winning, not winning the off-season.
While I hate that kind of thinking, the beat writer is probably right. The Jets might have been trying to make themselves more relevant again.
Hey, I had no issue with re-signing Revis. My criticism of the Revis signing had to do with the largesse of the contract. That contract, for an older cornerback, was over-the-top.
But like I’ve said many times, Mike Maccagnan, a very smart man, learned a valuable lesson from that profligate Revis contract, and perhaps Fitzpatrick and Mo Wilkerson are paying the price from that lesson.
As for Fitz, since he’s likely not going to be at the mini-camp barring a contract miracle, the best strategy would seem to be staying on the three-year deal for $24 million with $15 million guaranteed for the next five or six weeks.
This way they can probably avoid upping the ante twice.
When camp is about to start, and the Jets then say, “hey, we will increase the guaranteed money to $18 million, and give you a three-year, $27 million deal,” perhaps that can get it done.
But I think if they up the offer now, they will probably have to up in again, so at this point, you might as well wait to late July to do that.
June 13, 2016
Premium will return by 9:30 pm on Tuesday.