Brandon Marshall was pacing, slapping his hands together, talking to no one and everyone simultaneously.
“Who’s going to take the opportunity?!” the New York Jets wideout barked, watching an incompletion skid across the turf at the team’s indoor practice facility. “Who’s going to do it?”
Another pass hit the ground. Marshall grimaced in the direction of a group of young wideouts and quarterbacks. He barked again. “Who?!”
For a team that is still building, still trying to turn over a roster and patch up cracks with long-term solutions, it’s an appropriate question. Despite going 10-6 in the first year of a new regime last season, there’s an unmistakable undercurrent beneath this franchise. One that suggests a step forward (and a playoff appearance) isn’t a stable expectation this season, despite a defense that should be among the NFL’s elite. One that implies that quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick, despite getting his one-year deal to return, still doesn’t factor into the long-term picture. And one that frames the Jets’ 2016 season for what it is: a building block in a process that is far from complete.
It’s early in training camp, but the Jets look and sound like a team still working through the middle stages of a building process. That’s an important reality to grasp coming off a 10-6 season. That kind of record in the first season of a new braintrust – and final-week whiff on a postseason slot – typically stokes expectations. Conventional wisdom is progress begets more progress. But NFL progress isn’t always linear. Sometimes progress is made but the record doesn’t improve.
That might be the story of the Jets this season.
“It’s the second year, so it I wouldn’t call it a rebuilding process,” Jets coach Todd Bowles said of his roster. “But we are still building. Getting a year under our belt, we don’t have all the pieces that we think we need to have. But at the same time, the culture is still building. The team is still building. The talent is still building and the chemistry is still building. We’ve come some ways, but we’ve got a long ways to go in that aspect. It’s both roster building and culture building. You’re not going to come here in a year and solve everything.”
Look no further than the quarterbacks to understand that. With roughly six weeks to shuffle the depth chart, some realities are already crystalizing in camp. First: When the Jets talk about potentially carrying four quarterbacks, that’s not some kind of ploy. This team may have to take on the quartet of Fitzpatrick, Geno Smith, Christian Hackenberg and Bryce Petty. The short and long-term development of the position appears to demand it at the moment.
Why? Because the tiers in the quarterback group are so strikingly obvious right now. Fitzpatrick looks like the unquestionable No. 1, while Geno Smith (despite shortcomings) looks far ahead of both Hackenberg and Petty. Under normal circumstances, the mechanics of NFL roster-building suggests that the Jets would either cut Smith or hope he plays well enough in the preseason to draw a trade offer. That’s sensible speculation, particularly given he’s the one quarterback who wasn’t acquired by the current regime.
But Smith looks like he has a better grasp of the system right now, and that makes him valuable to the Jets. While plenty can change, both Hackenberg and Petty look like players who need the redshirt year to continue learning the playbook, and working on fundamentals and mechanics. That makes Smith and his experience a necessary buffer to allow the Jets to protect a player who needs significant grooming. By all accounts, that player is Hackenberg – who has no shortage of arm but whose footwork and accuracy appear to have a lot of work ahead.
The quarterback decisions are a microcosm that speaks most loudly as to where the Jets are in their development. Teams that are ready for a championship step – or even a strong playoff push – almost never fathom carrying four signal-callers. But the teams that are still finding their way? They tend to have unsettled quarterback depth charts, and will make decisions that tilt toward the developing players. That’s where the Jets are.
They’ll have to deal with it. And so will Fitzpatrick. While he “won” his negotiation this offseason and secured a one-year, $12 million deal, it’s clear that the Jets’ brain trust feels like it knows what he is. Despite his numbers in 2015, it boils down to how a quarterback is viewed. Can he take a team to the playoffs, or be a quarterback on a playoff team? Can he win a Super Bowl, or is he capable of being a quarterback on a championship team? The offseason negotiation with Fitzpatrick said a lot about those questions. And it suggested that the Jets think Fitzpatrick is what he is, capable of being a quarterback on a winning team, but unlikely to be a quarterback capable of creating many wins on his own.
This is the difference between being an elite NFL quarterback and being, well, someone in the middle. That may be part of why Fitzpatrick’s negotiation went the way it did this offseason. Because general manager Mike Maccagnan’s is steeped in scouting. When an executive like that is negotiating, he wants to pay a player for who he is and where he’s going. And at 33, Fitzpatrick’s arrow toward the future is level, not up. Maccagnan wanted to pay him as such, and tried to structure a deal to where Fitzpatrick will eventually end up – as a backup. On the flip side, Fitzpatrick didn’t want to bench himself contractually, which is what he would have done if he had signed anything but the one-year deal.
“It’s really wins,” Bowles said of which quarterback metrics matter. “You go by wins. If you’re winning and you’ve got a quarterback with [the right] formula and they understand the offense, it’s really wins and you work back from there. You want the talented, multipurpose quarterback, but wins come first.”
Even if Fitzpatrick seizes those W’s, there’s a chance that he’s essentially on one-year deals through the rest of his time in New York. Again – it’s all about the arrow. Fitzpatrick’s looks like it’s pointed in a level direction and eventually going to turn downward as his age advances. It’s up to him to prove otherwise, especially if Hackenberg shows marked development heading into next offseason.
In a way, that quarterback debate is the story of these Jets this season. It’s certainly not the only story. There’s the the long-term viability of Darrelle Revis as a cornerback; the health of Muhammad Wilkerson; whether or not Sheldon Richardson can turn a corner in his personal life.
Those are all questions, too. They’ve just been overshadowed by the great quarterback debate. Which is what happens when you’re still a team in the middle of the building phase. And make no mistake, that’s where these Jets are. Asking who is going to take the opportunity at hand, and adjusting the roster to fit the answer.
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