Fixed Competition to Blame for Jets' Disastrous Quarterback Situation

Regardless of how the rest of the season plays out for Michael Vick and the New York Jets, the Jets' quarterback situation remains a mess no one has been able to clean up in roughly a decade. 

Even if Vick can find a way to get the Jets back in the win column and playing football at a respectable level for the first time since early September, general manager John Idzik has barely moved the needle in his search for a franchise quarterback the Jets can depend on two years on the job.

Assuming he survives into next offseason, Idzik will once again be faced with the task of finding stability at the most important position in American sports, and he has no one but himself to blame—not necessarily for the decision to select Geno Smith in the second round of the 2013 draft, but rather how he has handled the position and betrayed his own core values of team-building. 

Idzik and the rest of the Jets brass have made plenty of mistakes on their way to a 1-8 record, but there was no bigger misstep than fixing the "competition" between Vick and Smith prior to the start of the season.

Elaine Thompson/Associated Press

When Idzik took the general manager job in 2013, he preached a mantra of constant competition to get the most out of his players, a concept he learned from Pete Carroll while working for the Seattle Seahawks. Carroll used this philosophy to extremes few coaches would dare to venture, but it was this philosophy that put Russell Wilson on the field long before anyone else thought he would.

Carroll is a world champion because he stuck to his core values and played his best players. Idzik is on the firing line because he turned on his own philosophy. 

Idzik may have talked about competition ad nauseam, but when the chips were down and this unorthodox method would be put to the test at the most important position on the field, Idzik balked. 

There was no real competition between Smith and Vick—it was Smith's job to lose, and Vick knew it from the start. Press conference "coach speak" was not going to convince this longtime veteran:

The Jets too had reason to want to start Smith over Vick on opening day. Smith was a talented prospect who still needed to convince the Jets that he was worthy of franchise quarterback treatment; sitting Smith on the bench was not going to get the Jets any closer to their long-term goals.

The Jets did achieve one goal in weeding out Smith as a franchise quarterback, but obtaining this intel has cost them an entire season. 

Still, instead of either publicly throwing their support behind Smith or hosting a true competition, the Jets tried to squeeze the benefits of both philosophies with disastrous results. If Smith was going to be their long-term starter going forward, he should not have had a problem beating out Vick. 

Now, the Jets are trying to win games in a lost season with a quarterback playing "catch-up" with his fellow starters—a hopeless situation that could have easily been avoided. 

If this was a true competition from the beginning, the Jets would have avoided the Smith disaster altogether, playing a motivated Vick in competitive games week after week. 

Vick is nowhere near his legendary 2010 form, but it is clear as day that he is the superior player to Smith based on his first start in Kansas City. Without throwing an interception, Vick managed to keep the Jets competitive against the top pass defense in the NFL. 

Just imagine if this motivated, energized version of Vick was the starter all along, without needing actual playing time in relief of a benched Smith against the San Diego Chargers to wake him up from his year-long slumber:

Without question, Vick should have been prepared to enter any game well-prepared—but the Jets created an environment that allowed Vick to embrace complacency. 

At his core, Vick embraces the idea of being a superstar, being the center of attention and all over the SportsCenter highlight reels. Maintaining that mindset is impossible with nothing but wearing a baseball cap and holding a clipboard on the Sunday itinerary week after week.

Charlie Riedel/Associated Press

A true competition would not have just put the better player on the field—it would have made both players better from it, including Smith. Without his job in serious jeopardy, Smith settled into his own realm of complacency that worsened as the season went on.

Competition makes people uncomfortable—but it also brings the best out of them.

There is no going back and redoing how the Jets handled their precarious quarterback situation, but Idzik and his brass can learn a career-defining lesson in the importance of sticking to one's philosophy.

Idzik now sees firsthand why Carroll is so unique in his willingness to take competition to relative extremes; making eyebrow-raising depth-chart changes, especially at quarterback, is much easier done in theory than in reality. This philosophy requires short-term sacrifice for long-term gain, including putting your handpicked quarterback on the bench in favor of an expiring veteran.

At some point, the Jets will be faced with another quarterback competition as they continue their seemingly endless search for a franchise player. Only time will tell whether this administration is willing to accept the lessons to be learned from its previous mistakes. 

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