Come closer. I’m going to let you in on a secret, but you have to keep your voice down.
I have a confession to make: I have no idea how good or bad Jets rookie quarterback Geno Smith is.
Shhh. Shhh. I can’t let people find out, especially my boss. This is 2013 when everyone with a Twitter account has an opinion … or take, that’s what they call opinions now. In this era of talk radio and people scoring points on ESPN for shouting louder than the person in the box next to them, you have to have a take. Everything is black or white. The gray area died about five or six years ago.
That has led to the back and forth this Jets season with everyone racing to be the first to say “Geno Smith is a franchise quarterback” or “Geno Smith stinks.”
But my friends in the media and I can get away with being wrong about Smith, who has been harder to figure out than AP calculus. The guy who has to make the right call on what Smith is or is not is Jets general manager John Idzik.
Idzik has eight games to decide whether Smith is the quarterback the Jets have been looking for since Joe Namath left town in the late 1970s — the one that is going to lead them to the Super Bowl. Or is he the latest in a long line of misses at the position?
The beauty of where the Jets drafted Smith — in the second round — is they can move on pretty easily after this season if they don’t like what they see. Smith is scheduled to make a little more than $1 million next year. So if Idzik decides Smith is not the guy to hand the franchise over to, he could draft a quarterback and have him compete with Smith or make Smith the backup without any guilt over a huge investment being made in him.
The 2014 quarterback class is already viewed as one of the deepest in years. Oregon’s Marcus Mariota, Louisville’s Teddy Bridgewater and UCLA’s Brett Hundley top the class, but there is depth with Texas A&M’s Johnny Manziel, LSU’s Zach Mettenberger and Alabama’s AJ McCarron right behind them. If the Jets fall in love with one of those quarterbacks, they can’t pass just because Smith might be the guy. They have to be certain.
Idzik’s task is not an easy one. Smith has looked like the answer at times this season and looked lost at others. Last year’s rookie quarterbacks altered people’s perceptions of how rookies can play in the NFL. Andrew Luck, Robert Griffin III and Russell Wilson were clear-cut franchise quarterbacks after their rookie year. Usually, it’s much tougher to assess, and Smith fits right in line with that.
The 4-4 Jets have gone as Geno has gone this year. In the four wins, he has thrown seven touchdowns and four interceptions and added two rushing touchdowns. In the four losses, he has just one touchdown and nine interceptions.
This will be the biggest decision Idzik will have to make in his early career as Jets general manager — even bigger than whether to trade Darrelle Revis. Nothing dooms a franchise more than sticking with the wrong quarterback for too long, and it is rare to find a franchise quarterback anywhere other than the draft.
If you take the 10 highest-rated quarterbacks this season, only Peyton Manning and Drew Brees are not playing for their original teams. The Colts and Chargers moved on after those players suffered serious injuries, opting for a younger quarterback, and the Broncos and Saints benefited, but those are rare exceptions.
If Idzik decides to stick with Smith and he fails it could set the franchise back for several years. Then you’re talking about drafting someone in 2015 or ’16 and giving them a few years to develop. It would also mean passing on the class of ’14 and possibly missing out on the answer to the position.
The Jets have to look no further than their recent history with Mark Sanchez to see what sticking with the wrong guy can do. The Jets were fooled by four playoff wins in his first two years into thinking he was the answer. The next two years showed Sanchez wasn’t and they found themselves back at square one this year drafting Smith and opening up the job.
I’d like to end this column with a declarative sentence telling Idzik what he should do — something Skip Bayless could shout. But eight games into his rookie year, Smith is a mystery to me.
Jets fans better hope Idzik does not feel the same way in two months.