There’s nothing definitive yet regarding the shoulder injury suffered last night by Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez, per a source with knowledge of the situation. If Sanchez isn’t available to play, the outlook for coach Rex Ryan could be much more definitive.
Based on Saturday night’s preseason game against the Jets, a season with Geno Smith as the starter will likely be bad enough to get Ryan fired.
Smith, who threw three interceptions, had apparently lost the quarterback competition to Sanchez. But Ryan nevertheless put Sanchez in the game late, exposing his $8.25 million starter-by-default to the injury he suffered.
Per Rich Cimini of ESPNNewYork.com, Sanchez didn’t want to play with backups. And it appeared that Matt Simms would enter the game instead of Sanchez, before Simms took a seat and Sanchez rushed through a warmup and hit the field.
An executive from an opposing team called it, via Cimini, “gross mismanagement” of the quarterback position.
Manish Mehta of the New York Daily News, who has called the quarterback competition a “charade” and “farcical,” opines that Ryan “took ineptitude and incompetence to new heights with a boneheaded decision” to play Sanchez.
Making the decision to play Sanchez even more bizarre is the fact that Ryan presumably was the guy who wanted to start the season with Sanchez, while the front office had been lobbying for Smith. So with Sanchez having the job secured, Ryan merely needed to keep Sanchez healthy -- by keeping him out of the game.
Now, Ryan may be on his way to being out of the game. Or, at a minimum, out of New York.
And we’re still two weeks away from the start of the regular season.