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So will the Jets decide who their starting quarterback is going to be by mid-June? That storyline was all over the internet today. Let’s take a look . . .
The Jets recently gave Manish Mehta a one-on-one interview with their new offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg.
And that interview led to this headline in the Daily News- “Quarterback competition between Mark Sanchez and Geno Smith could be over before training camp: Marty Mornhinweg.”
Sub-headline – “The new offensive coordinator would like to have a starter selected sooner rather than later to maximize the quarterback’s reps with the first-team offense, be it Sanchez or rookie QB Smith.”
First off, this re-iterates the Daily News scoop that Greg McElroy and Matt Simms are already out of the competition.
But let’s get to the real premise of this story, which was mentioned all over the internet today (Mehta does an amazing job getting his sports section attention – I’m dead serious).
“The Jets’ ballyhooed quarterback competition may be over before Mark Sanchez and Geno Smith even make it to Cortland, N.Y., for the start of training camp in late July,” wrote Mehta.
But honestly, when you read Mornhinweg’s quotes in the story, they don’t necessarily back up the premise of the piece.
Mehta led into Marty’s first quote by stating that the team’s braintrust isn’t averse to the declaring a winner in the coming weeks.
“We don’t care what the prevailing thought is,” new offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg told the Daily News about the perception that the quarterback battle will certainly be alive at the start of training camp. “We only care about our competition here.”
I’m sorry, with all due respect to Mehta (believe it or not, we don’t have a bad relationship), I just don’t see how that quote backs up the point of this column (I’d call it an article, but in sports journalism today, every article is basically a column, rife with opinions).
Okay, let’s go to the second quote which had a paragraph leading into asking if Jets could declare a winner based on 10 OTA practices and three minicamp practices.
Mornhinweg answered – “Oh, absolutely. Sure. Absolutely. That’s all part of the process. Absolutely. Everything we do is important. Our meetings are important… the way we go about our meetings, the way we go about our preparation right now with a new system. These are very important things. Every pass we throw out there in OTAs and these practices are important.”
While he did say “absolutely” three times at the beginning of the quote, the rest of the statement did nothing to back it up. It was just boilerplate stuff that didn’t really point you in the direction that a decision would be made before camp. It sounds like Marty was using that quote to motivate the quarterbacks.
The Jets would be insane to make this decision after OTAs and minicamp. According to the Daily News (and New York Times), the Jets have whittled the competition down to Sanchez and Smith. These two quarterbacks have SO many question marks about their games right now, how on earth could you make a decision based on touch football in the spring?
This is a competition that might need an entire training camp, and definitely needs two or three preseason games (the fourth preseason is a joke).
Remember a notable shortcoming of both Sanchez and Smith – neither gets high marks for pocket presence. And in practice, you have a “faux” pass rush. Defensive players in practice can’t touch the quarterback.
Here is what happens so often in practice – a defender beats a lineman and would likely have a sack, but he holds up, and the quarterback throws the ball, after what would have been a likely sack (teams don’t like to waste reps for their receivers).
So since Sanchez and Smith struggle with pocket presence, and also tend to hold the ball too long, the Jets really need preseason games, probably three, to see what they do against live bullet – opposing pass rushers, defensive schemes and the potential for real sacks.
If the Jets make a decision in mid-June, as the Daily News was speculating today, it would qualify as a bad football decision by their brass.
Honestly, I don’t think it’s going to happen.
May 21, 2013
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