The Jets whacked Mark Sanchez Friday night.
Right move.
Out with the old, and in with Michael Vick.
Wrong move.
With all due respect to an artist formerly known as Sanchise, It is another Jets Buttfumble.
It is the makings of yet another ugly Jets quarterback controversy.
Sanchez simply had to go. He badly needs a fresh start somewhere else, anywhere else. His mere presence would have made for an awkward and potentially divisive dynamic in the Jets locker room, if for no other reason than he wanted his old job back.
But guess what? No matter what Vick says publicly, he wants Geno Smith’s job every bit as much.
Everyone knows the mantra around the Jets since general manager John Idzik arrived: competition through and through. Vick already has the talking points.
“It’s open competition every day,” Vick said on a conference call Friday night. “Right now, Geno’s the starting quarterback for this football team.”
It was coach Rex Ryan’s enabling of Sanchez, his reluctance to have a veteran backup so much as take a single practice snap away from his Chosen One, led to the artist formerly known as Sanchise’s unraveling and undoing.
But it is one thing to push a young quarterback, and quite another to threaten his tenuous hold on the starting job
The danger here is the signing of Vick, who becomes the highest-paid Jets quarterback with his reported one-year, $5 million deal, sends an unmistakeable message to Smith the organizational does not believe in him the way an organization needs to believe in a young quarterback. After all, what is Smith to think, when everyone knows how much offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg, who coached Vick in Philadelphia, obviously lobbied to work with him again?
In other words: In Geno, They Do Not Trust.
The best-case scenario is Vick, who has turned his life around and was viewed in Philadelphia as a wonderful teammate, even by the quarterback who supplanted him, Nick Foles, proves to be mentor to Smith, who takes the next step with the weapons Idzik has begun getting him.
But how many times do you remember best-case scenarios ever visiting Hofstra or Cortland, N.Y., or Florham Park, N.J., or East Rutherford, N.J.?
Remember: Vick beat out Foles last summer, and no one should be surprised if he beats out Smith this summer.
The reason why Vick lost his job to Foles was he couldn’t stay on the field, which happens to be his history. Along with being a turnover machine.
If you notice, the Bills aren’t putting this kind of heat on EJ Manuel, the Bengals never tried to push Andy Dalton to greatness, the Titans supported Jake Locker, on and on it goes.
Despite what the Jets have been saying publicly, Smith obviously did not show them enough to make them fall in love with him.
So in other words, they have no starting quarterback, but a pair of No. 2 quarterbacks vying to be the starter.
In Jets world, where so much is open to interpretation, you can view Vick’s arrival as Idzik and Ryan being on the same page, or, more ominously, the general manager with the long-range vision throwing Ryan, the head coach who must win now to keep his job, a bone.
Two summers ago, the Jets gave us Sanchez vs. Tim Tebow.
Last summer, they gave us Sanchez vs. Smith, with Smith the survivor only because Ryan put Sanchez in harm’s way in Garbage Time to win the Snoopy Bowl.
This summer: Smith vs Vick.
Buttfumble II.