Marty Morhinweg On Six QBs

When the Jets changed offensive coordinators this off-season, everyone knew that Marty Mornhinweg had his work cut out for him.  The questions surrounding Tim Tebow were near the top of the list.  Rehabbing Mark Sanchez was potentially the biggest to do item on Marty’s list.  The Jets ranked 30th in passing yards in 2012 and they lost their top rusher (Shonn Greene) to free agency.  When your QBs throw 5 more interceptions than touchdowns; there is a lot of work to be done.  A veteran QB was needed to push Sanchez so David Garrard was signed.

Nobody saw this six quarterback situation coming though.  Mark Sanchez, Tim Tebow, Geno Smith, Greg McElroy, David Garrard and Matt Simms are all on the roster now.  It would seem like drafting Geno Smith effectively puts an end to the Mark Sanchez era.  Matt Simms never had a realistic chance of making the team.  Regardless, that still leaves a lot to sort out.

Marty Morhinweg spoke about this situation today and said, “We’ve got a host of quarterbacks and now, highly talented young men. This thing is going to be about competition and that brings out the best. Now you give up just a little bit doing it that way with the reps, and so that’s going to be an important process, well thought out and very well structured as far as how we go about practicing to get everybody enough reps, number one, to get a great evaluation on them and opportunity. And then reps are part of the learning process for all of the quarterbacks.”

Which means that the Jets have to clear bodies out before they think about having any sort of football workout.  Do they have enough chairs in the conference room for a QB only meeting?

Marty was asked, more specifically, about how many quarterbacks you can have a competition with.  This time he gave a more specific answer, “Yeah, and we talked about that just a little bit as far as reps. So I know you can do it with three. Now there’s got to come a time, certainly, when you make a choice, and so the timing is important as well. So, everything we do is important and so it’s got to be very well thought out, very well planned, to get that accomplished with competition.”

When Marty was asked about the criticism that Geno Smith received he told the media, “I did hear about that, but we don’t care about anybody else’s evaluation. We only care about our evaluations. Once again, our personnel department with John (Idzik) and the scouting department, they were on top of every player with great detail. That was an impressive thing going through those meetings with our personnel department. We only care about our evaluations.”

If the Jets think Geno Smith is the real deal, it is hard to believe they will head to training camp with Mark Sanchez on the roster.