The New York Jets and Ryan Fitzpatrick need to get over their current spat and get ready for the 2016 NFL season.
The relationship between the New York Jets and Ryan Fitzpatrick has essentially become what you would see between a star high school quarterback and the head cheerleader.
Sure, they argue all the time. Both are to blame for the ridiculous and over-dramatic fights that play out in public. It seems, every now and again, that the two don’t actually like each other at all. Nobody believes that the two are going to be together forever.
And yet everybody knows that the two need each other until they graduate and then move on.
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Fitzpatrick and the Jets are dependent on each other in a similar way. No reasonable football mind out there believes that Fitzpatrick is going to magically evolve into Kurt Warner 2.0 en route to winning a Most Valuable Player award and leading the Jets to a Super Bowl victory. Fitzpatrick is not a long-term solution for any team let alone for a Jets side that has recently done more to ruin young QBs than to help develop who would become the team’s starting signal-caller for a decade.
At the same time, the Jets don’t have a plethora of better options on the table as of the first week of May. Geno Smith may one day improve and become capable of routinely winning on Sundays. Odds are, however, that won’t happen unless Smith finds a change of scenery and a coaching staff willing to believe in him. To-be rookie Christian Hackenberg could become the guy for the Jets, but Hackenberg is a project who shouldn’t start at any point in 2016. The Jets drafting Hackenberg tells you all you need to know about what those running the club feel about Bryce Petty.
Peyton Manning isn’t making a comeback. Brian Hoyer clearly and understandably didn’t impress the Jets before Hoyer signed to be a backup for the Chicago Bears. Josh McCown is in no way a better option than Fitzpatrick, and the Jets shouldn’t offer the Cleveland Browns any sort of draft pick to acquire McCown.
Fitzpatrick, meanwhile, doesn’t have a lot of options available to him at this point of the game.
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The Browns are not signing another free agent quarterback after acquiring Robert Griffin III and drafting Cody Kessler. Fitzpatrick won’t be starting for the Denver Broncos in September. The Los Angeles Rams, Philadelphia Eagles and Houston Texans won’t be interested in giving Fitzpatrick a starting gig in 2016. Neither Fitzpatrick nor the Buffalo Bills should be eyeing a reunion.
“But what about the rumor that Fitzpatrick would be willing to sit out a year rather than sign a low-ball offer from the Jets?” Please. Fitzpatrick will be 34-years-old by the time the 2016 holiday season rolls around, and his 2015 campaign that was the best of his NFL career was hardly historic. Fitzpatrick didn’t re-write record books or play like one of the best QBs in the league who is worth tens of millions of dollars. He played well enough to keep his job for another season.
That’s about it.
Nobody, not Gang Green fans or even the Jets, should begrudge Fitzpatrick for wanting to be paid. The Jets, as Darryl Slater of NJ.com explained, have enough available cap space to make Fitzpatrick what a quarterback with his resume should view as a fair offer. Fitzpatrick, meanwhile, needs to understand that there is not going to be a bidding war for his services. His options are sign with the Jets and make several millions of dollars in one year, or sit at home and sit on the money he has already made.
Are the Jets going to get away with signing Fitzpatrick on a discount? Probably. There is, it would turn out, little market for a middle-of-the-road quarterback when 30 NFL franchises already have players who can start under center in August. Could Fitzpatrick sit home, wait for QBs to pick up injuries during the summer months and/or during the regular season and then potentially obtain a contract that way? He could, but doing so wouldn’t earn him any more money than what is being offered by the Jets, nor would such a situation be a better fit than what Fitzpatrick has in New Jersey.
What is most frustrating about this entire ordeal is the perception that the outcome is inevitable. Listen to a local sports talk radio host discuss this matter for any significant amount of time, and you will hear that it is just assumed that Fitzpatrick and the Jets are going to come to terms on a deal sooner or later.
So just make it sooner and put an end to all of this.
Nobody should confuse the Jets with the New England Patriots, Carolina Panthers or any other team picked to be a favorite to win the Super Bowl next February. That does not mean that the Jets cannot be a good football team this fall, one that can compete for a playoff spot and maybe make some noise in the division standings.
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Both Fitzpatrick and the Jets have successfully made their points. Fitzpatrick showed that he would not simply accept whatever pity offer the Jets were willing to make to him without first putting up a fight, and the Jets proved that they would not be held hostage by a QB who has never won anything of merit. Congrats to both of you for achieving these meaningless goals.
Now knock it off, get back together and begin making plans for the high school prom you’ve been destined to go to as a couple this entire time.