Nothing has lower stakes than the Jets’ 2017 QB battle

The biggest news out of New York Jets OTAs this week is that journeyman Josh McCown appears to have taken a commanding lead in the team’s quarterback battle against Bryce Petty and Christian Hackenberg. Hopefully the Jets get it right because it could make the difference between winning four or five games in 2017.

After two years of expensive stopgappery with Ryan Fitzpatrick, the Jets haven’t so much gone in a new direction as decided to tread water at quarterback. Even though Fitzpatrick struggled mightily th season and feuded with management, the Jets waited until December, when the team was well out of playoff contention, before turning the reins over to Petty, who proceeded to almost effortlessly embody all the trademark awfulness of a Jets QB, right down to ending his season attempting to make a tackle on a fumble.

One might think with a slew of young passers, the team would proceed with the assumption that one of them would get a chance to start and presumably prove themselves in 2017. Instead, the team ventured into free agency, didn’t bother with Colin Kaepernick, Jay Cutler, and several other veterans who might actually have gotten fans a little excited. They returned with a 37-year-old who has only started more than 10 games twice in a 14-year career.

McCown is a fine enough backup, and might even be adequate to game manage a loaded roster to nine wins if there is sufficient talent stacked around him. Unfortunately, that is not the case in New York. If the Jets are tanking for their quarterback of the future in a buzzed-about 2018 draft class, that’s understandable, though they could at least do it in a more interesting way.

Of course, it’s hard to conclude that the Jets are indeed tanking because of their situation at coach. 2017 is being billed as a do-or-die year for head coach Todd Bowles, and now the franchise has presented him with a scenario where there are few positive outcomes. There is scant organizational faith in either Petty or Hackenberg. If one of them were to start and show some promise, there would at least be momentum going beyond 2017. With McCown, even if he plays better than expected, he’s not the future of the team. Anything short of an incredibly unlikely playoff appearance will likely be viewed as an unconstructive failure, leading to Bowles’ termination.

If Bowles is fired, that means the presumptive rookie drafted in 2018 enters into a situation with a new coach already consumed with tailoring the roster to suit his style. That’s less than ideal for a quarterback just entering the NFL. The Jets are setting Bowles up for failure. If they are that intent on moving on, they’d be better off getting rid of him now and starting their new direction immediately, rather than put Bowles through an aimless and mostly frustrating final season.

It’s fair to note that the quarterback battle presently ongoing in Cleveland is also unlikely to yield a franchise-caliber passer. There are a few factors, however, that make the Browns’ situation actually less depressing than the Jets’. Cleveland actually has a plan in place for the future, one that involves stockpiling draft picks and assembling a talented roster around a future quarterback. And at least the Browns used one of their many picks on DeShone Kizer, one of the brighter prospects in the 2017 draft, in the second round, where there’s less pressure on him to immediately produce.

That the Jets didn’t give into desperation for a well-known but also questioned rookie passer, as the Bears did with Mitch Trubisky, is commendable. The alternative, however, is bound to be an unsatisfying limbo that forestalls a firing everyone sees coming. At least setting expectations low is being merciful to Jets fans.