Short-term IR good move, but timing suspect

As you all know by now, Mark Sanchez was put on short-term IR. Was this the right move? Yes. Was the timing?

Sanchez should have been put on Injured Reserve (IR) with the designation for return before Week One.

It was a poor decision to wait two weeks.

Mark Sanchez outplayed Geno Smith this summer. I agree with Sanchez when he said the other day that he won the job. He’s right, he did.

I’m not putting Sanchez in Canton, I’m just saying he beat out the super-raw Smith this summer. That doesn’t mean Mark is Peyton Manning. It just means he beat out Smith.

And since he beat out Smith, and seemed to be a better fit for Marty Mornhinweg’s offense than Tony Sparano’s offense last year, you put him on short-term IR immediately, and this way, with a couple of months of rehab, he can be back for the second half of the season.

Now, he can only return for the final six games of the season.

Some have speculated that the Jets delayed this move a bit because they didn’t want to make the decision to put Sanchez into the fourth quarter of the Giants game look worse, by putting him on eight-week IR shortly after the injury. For a while they were downplaying the severity, with the “day-to-day” rhetoric. It was speculated this was done to dim the spotlight on a poor coaching decision. Obviously there is no way to prove this, so for now, it’s a “grassy knoll” theory.

It was announced by Chris Mortensen and Jay Glazer on pre-game shows BEFORE THE JETS OPENER AGAINST TAMPA BAY, that Sanchez has a slightly torn labrum in his right shoulder.

So if these guys got this information (which was dead-on) before the opener, the Jets brass obviously knew it.

With a slightly torn labrum, you really need to give him a couple of months to rehab it.

Idzik should have been proactive and just done it before the opener.

And you know what, most people around the press room think that the information was leaked to Mortensen and Glazer by the Sanchez camp, likely from his agency.

Why?

They were clearly fed-up with this Ryan, perhaps on orders from people above him, telling the press Sanchez was “day-to-day.”

This downplaying of the severity of the injury cleared ticked off “Team Sanchez.” This disgust was relayed to Mike Silver, also likely from the Sanchez camp.

“Day-to-day,” makes it sound very minor. This isn’t a minor injury.

Can you rehab him and come back to play later in the year? Probably.

But jeez, the guy hasn’t even thrown a football since the injury. To call it “day-to-day” over the last month, since the injury against the Giants, just wasn’t pragmatic.

How is a quarterback not throwing a football “day-to-day?”

That characterization was unfair to the player, fans and media. It wasn’t steeped in reality.

And that is why I think the Sanchez camp likely leaked the “partially torn labrum” situation.

So the bottom line here is simple – Sanchez should have been put on short-term IR before the first game.

End of story.

September 14, 2013

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