There’s a reason the Jets re-signing Ryan Fitzpatrick feels so inevitable. Mostly, it’s because every plan the team makes seems to include him.
During today’s appearance on WFAN, Jets General Manager Mike Maccagnan said he was willing to take all four quarterbacks into camp and the regular season. Which would be more interesting if they had more than three on the roster at the moment.
Via Darryl Slater of NJ.com, Maccagnan said he liked the idea of keeping Geno Smith around along with youngsters Bryce Petty and Christian Hackenberg.
“The simple answer to your question is yes,” Maccagnan said when asked if the Jets could keep four quarterbacks. “We even discussed that a little bit [internally]. At the end of the day, quarterbacks are important, obviously in the league in general. But in a perfect world, I think you’d like to take your time to develop [young] quarterbacks and have them almost in the pipeline, basically.
“So that’s kind of our approach to this whole thing. If it’s in the best interest of the team at the end of training camp that we carry four quarterbacks, then we carry four quarterbacks. It’s not unprecedented in the NFL. It’s been done before. To me, it’s a position where you have to take some time to really invest, grow, and develop players.”
With the widespread assumption that Fitzpatrick will eventually return, you know they’re keeping him and Hackenberg, who they just used a second-round pick on. But Maccagnan’s stance Tuesday was a bit of a vote of confidence in Smith as the veteran backup (Man, he has to get tired of being a backup to a guy who isn’t even on the roster) as well as in Petty as having more promise than previously displayed.
“This will be a big offseason for [Smith] going forward, and we’ll see how he develops,” Maccagnan said. “We like the idea of having Fitz, in a perfect world, back here in the organization with Geno and our young two quarterbacks.”
The Jets view both Hackenberg and Petty as developmental players, but the pace of that development would obviously hinge on when Fitzpatrick returns, since it doesn’t seem like if has ever been considered an option.