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Bills rookie QB Josh Allen nailed it as far I’m concerned.
He is close to coming back from an elbow injury.
He played earlier in the year, and now has been on the shelve for a while.
He was asked about it and said, “I don’t think it’s affected me negatively at all. I actually think it was kind of a blessing in disguise.”
Great perspective.
When you are struggling as a rookie QB, nothing wrong with being put on ice for a few weeks, watch from the sidelines, and go back in with a different perspective and mindset, after the re-set button was pushed.
Todd Bowles said on Wednesday about Darnold possibly being out, “Anytime you get an injury [to] a starter, it’s a blow to the team.”
Look, if you lost Leonard Williams on the defensive line or Jamal Adams from the secondary, that is a blow to the Jets.
This isn’t.
I always try to deal with reality, not perception.
Right now, Josh McCown gives the Jets a better chance to win at the quarterback position.
And I have nothing against Sam Darnold. I think he has a huge upside and should be very good in time. But the last three weeks the Jets offense has been stuck in quicksand, with the last game, in Miami, honestly, an embarrassment. The Dolphins defense is bad, but you would have thought they were the 1985 Bears watching that game.
Darnold threw four picks in this game, and it could have been six. There were two other near picks.
And one of the picks was a real eye-opener about how far he needs to go. The first Darnold interception, picked off by linebacker Kiko Alonso, was thrown to an area with not one, not two, not three, but four defenders.
I asked Jeremy Bates about this play today.
“Yeah it was a play action and Sam didn’t see him and he threw it deep and it got picked,” Bates said.
He didn’t see him or the other three guys.
Darnold needs a time-out.
And the Jets locker room needs a win.
It’s one thing for an organization to decide to write off a season to develop a QB, but do you really think the players who beat up their bodies every Sunday are into that?
Look, I know they get paid good money to play, but they do want to win.
I once heard a player say, “Food tastes better after a win.”
The Jets can do whatever they want, they are a private company. So if they decided to use this season to develop a player they view as their long-term answer at QB, that is their right.
But let’s not act like the Darnold injury has somehow forced a bonafide starter out of the lineup, and forced them to play an over-matched back-up.
It that was the case, why hasn’t the Las Vegas line moved?
McCown gives them a better chance to win right now.
The players know that. Interviewing a couple of offensive players today, you got a different vibe from them, a little more excitement. The last three games the Jets’ offense has been putrid. Not blaming this all on Darnold, but some of it. Well actually, none of it. He didn’t force himself into the lineup too fast.
The players aren’t stupid. They know McCown gives them a better chance to win now. I’m not talking about in 2020, but now.
So to act like the Jets are down a starter this week, and it’s going to bring them down a notch, is preposterous.
Darnold could be good in time, but a “time-out” right now isn’t the end of the world.
November 8, 2018
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