A Week 14 Jets Rant - With a Chart!

Remember last month when the Jets beat New Orleans and were 5-4 with a bye week and the lowly 3-7 Buffalo Bills coming up next?  That was a good time.

Even though Jets fans were riding high after the New Orleans win, signs the wheels were about to come off the season actually started that week.  It was the week they put the training wheels on Geno Smith.  The Jets had some brutal games against New England, Tennessee, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati but something about them was oddly watchable.  They were throwing the ball down the field.  Since the Cincinnati game in Week 8, Geno Smith hasn't completed double digit passes in a game.  The Jets defense is pretty good but not good enough to overcome three and outs over and over again. 

I'm on record as a Mark Sanchez apologist but I was slowly getting on board with Geno Smith a little bit.  It was probably more on board with Marty Mornhinweg but either way, the Jets offense was moving the ball a little.  It was encouraging.  But when they overachieved to the point where the playoffs were a possibility they then decided that they weren't going to let Geno blow it for them.  But that's exactly what they did.  Geno can say all the right things in the media but the Jets shattered his confidence and he's now a historically bad quarterback.  He's broken and I don't want to watch him any more.  The sweet line graph below shows the decrease in first downs the Jets are getting per game.  The line indicates when Geno's training wheels were put on.

The question now becomes what do the Jets owe to their fans going forward?  We're coming up to Week 14 now and Geno Smith has started every game.  If the Jets haven't seen all they need to see from this guy, then I am very concerned.  I'm not going to say I want to see Matt Simms start or I want to see David Garrard start since none of them are the long term answer either, so I'll just say I want to see Not Geno Smith as the Jets QB.  They've thrown up three consecutive "no competes" and it's very hard to watch.  I just need to see something different.  From a franchise standpoint I get why they have to start Geno Smith but if they have to do it, can they please open up the playbook again?  If we have to keep watching this guy, then can we at least see the ball travel more than 6 yards in the air?  I can take the turnovers to an extent if we're trying to push the ball down field.  If the Jets are still evaluating Geno Smith can they at least evaluate him by letting him do something?

I know John Idzik is trying build something here but at the same time don't the fans deserve a somewhat watchable product?

The Mark Sanchez Apologist

One rule I have about sports betting is that I can't bet for or against my favorite teams.  Winning money on my team losing doesn't lessen the blow of the loss and I'm just superstitious enough to believe that maybe if I didn't bet on my favorite team to win that they wouldn't have lost.  I'm aware it's irrational, yet I still don't want to feel those feelings.

So yesterday was "big" news from Jets camp.  Although it's been unofficial for over a week, Geno Smith was officially named the starter for Week 1.  The reason I brought up the sports betting is that the Jets Win Total in Vegas right now is 6.  If I was capable of betting on this, I think the under is a pretty solid bet with Geno Smith playing.  He's not ready.  If Sanchez was starting the season I would have been more inclined to take the over.  Don't get me wrong, the Jets are not a playoff caliber team but if I'm putting a number to it, I believe Sanchez is worth at least 2-3 wins more than Geno Smith right now.

So after everything I've seen during the Mark Sanchez era, how can I justify a statement like that?  Easier than you think:

2009-2010 - These years are easy.  Two AFC Championships games and beat Tom Brady and Peyton Manning on the road in the playoffs.  Also overlooked is his 9:3 TD to INT ratio in the postseason. 

2011 - Sure he turned the ball over 22 times but it wasn't all negative.  He also accounted for 32 touchdowns (26 passing, 6 rushing).  He was only one of seven QBs to reach that amount that year.  Also take in to account that they chose Santonio Holmes over Braylon Edwards(whom Sanchez obviously had a better re pore with) after the 2010 season and replaced him with a fresh from prison Plaxico Burress.  They also let one of his favorite security blankets get away in Jerricho Cotchery and replaced him with a finished Derrick Mason.  If you watched that year you saw Plaxico and Mason weren't able to get any separation.  He was routinely throwing to covered receivers.  The Jets missed the playoffs and took a step back as a team, but Mark Sanchez actually showed me the ability to put TDs on the board.

2012 - Of course Sanchez takes a lot of blame for last year.  It was a terrible year.  But I also put a lot of it on Tony Sparano.  Brian Schottenheimer wasn't a great offensive coordinator, but at least he was an offensive coordinator.  Rex Ryan has made a lot of decisions that people question over the years, but for me the worst decision he made was bringing in Sparano to run the offense.  Week to week it looked like the team didn't even have a game plan.  I don't know if any quarterback could have succeeded in that "system" last year.

I'm not saying that Mark Sanchez's leash should have been infinite; I just really wanted to give him one more year under an actual offensive coordinator.  I'm not saying Marty Mornhinweg is some offensive wizard who could have saved Sanchez's career or anything but like Brian Schottenheimer, he's a guy who at least has a plan week to week.  If Sanchez fell on his head this year then I was fine going with Geno Smith at some point.  But as an organization it was always going to be harder to go from Geno Smith back to Mark Sanchez then it was going to be going from Mark Sanchez to Geno Smith.  So now that it is Geno Smith from Week 1, I imagine we'll never see Mark Sanchez throw another pass in a Jets uniform.