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It’s simple.
ESPN had a story today with the headline – “Best way to describe Jets’ QB situation: It’s complicated.”
I don’t think it’s complicated at all. And I’m not trying to be a contrarian.
First off, before I explain why I think it’s simple, let me get into sports media strategy for a second.
Things are really, really bad on the business side of the sports journalism world.
Last year, Fox Sports laid off all their website writers.
ESPN laid off a ton of website reporters last year including John Clayton and Andy Katz.
Newspapers are laying people off left and right.
For goodness sake, Peter King just left Sports Illustrated. If you don’t think that was financially driven, you are kidding yourself. He was making big bucks, and rightfully so. But it’s hard to pay that kind of dough these days for the written word.
It’s brutal out there. Brutal. I hate to shatter anyone’s dreams, but I would think long and hard about majoring in journalism in college. Well let me put that a different way – it might not be a great idea to major in journalism with an eye towards print. Broadcast journalism probably isn’t a bleak, though terrestrial radio is struggling. Sports journalism is like that TV show “Survivor” now. People are dropping like flies. Who will be the last one standing.
Perhaps those who don’t make a fortune and generate a ton of clicks for their websites will be the last one’s standing.
Tons of clicks can actually generate quality advertising money.
So let me get back to the Jets. Most of the beat writers are getting harassed on a daily basis by their editors to get more clicks.
With that being said, quarterback controversies generate clicks. People want to know what is going on in QB battle on an hourly and daily basis.
So Jets writers need a QB controversy this summer. They need to be like Bob Arum and Don King – fight promoters. They need to gin up a lot of interest in this QB fight/battle.
I think the situation is very simple right now, at least in my world view.
Josh McCown clearly should be the starter. He gives the Jets the best chance to win. I think his performance last year was some of the best QB-play I’ve seen around here in a long time.
He wasn’t perfect, but he had some awfully impressive performances. And keep two things in mind when evaluating him – the Jets’ offensive line was wildly inconsistent last year and also their pass defense was atrocious. So he was often running for his life and he had to win shootouts (due to the horrid pass defense). I’m telling your right now, you give this guy a consistent running game and better pass defense (to keep the scores down), and he can do a heck of a job for the Jets this year.
Teddy Bridgewater should be the #2. Since the Jets need to make the playoffs this year, they need a backup who can win games if McCown gets hurt early in the year.
And Sam Darnold should play if the Jets get eliminated from the wild-card late in the season.
I’d put Hackenberg on the practice squad. I will get into that another day, but I have no problem doing that. In fact, I would have done that last year, but some people worry about how things look.
So to me, this is simple.
But simple doesn’t get clicks.
And I’m not ripping the reporters – they’re all trying to survive.
May 21, 2018
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