Sitting here this morning watching First Take on ESPN2 I
watched and listened to Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless make remarks on Rex
Ryan’s Geno Smith and his “brutal” play in practice yesterday. Both Smith and Bayless said that Rex was out
of bounds with his remarks, and I agree with everything they said. Here are my thoughts on the situation…
Rex Ryan has no reason to say what he did about Geno Smith
whatsoever, it was a practice and it was AFTER Geno hurt his ankle in the
preseason game. Sorry Rex there is no excuse for that at all, and he needs to
not be so public with these words or at least tone it down. Geno Smith is a rookie on a team that has had
offensive issues, turnovers are inevitable and he was very good about protecting
the ball up until yesterday, which to me sounds like the ankle has a lot to do
with it. Geno wanted to practice, that
to me speaks more volume than the turnovers do, I think Geno should be
commended on his heart for wanting to go out and prove himself rather than sit.
Perhaps what bothers me more than that is that we never saw
Rex talk about Sanchez this way at all, not even last year when Mark was
benched due to his less than stellar play, instead Rex has been overprotective
of him. It is rather hypocritical that
Rex would publicly go off on Geno but keep quiet on Sanchez, I think it
partially has to do with the fact that Rex Ryan had the Jets trade up in 2009
to the 5th overall pick to draft Sanchez. I cannot blame him for wanting to protect
himself from that pick (which was way too high for Sanchez), but to act the way
he does protecting Sanchez and then making the harsh comments on Geno is not
the way a coach should act. If Rex is trying
to toughen Geno up which is what Bayless had mentioned could be a possibility,
but again where were these words from the first day Sanchez walked in the door?
Sanchez has never had much competition until this season,
meaning Rex should have been harder, and let’s be honest the likes of Kellen
Clemens, Mark Brunell and Tim Tebow (however he is a great football player,
just not at quarterback) are not in any way competition . Now that he does have to truly worry about
another QB on the roster Rex is back to the rescue yet again, this is just a
summary of how the Ryan/Sanchez duo has worked over the last four seasons and
now entering their fifth season together.
In the end what was said cannot be changed or brought back,
but Rex needs to treat both quarterbacks the same way to make this competition
fair, you cannot go after one quarterback and not after the other. If Rex
Ryan should be speaking up the way he
did yesterday it should have been on Sanchez’s pick six on the first drive of
the Jets preseason game, and yes Sanchez bounced back and tossed a
touchdown. That does not change
anything, Sanchez is so up and down that what happened in that game did not
surprise me, but this kind of one-sided mindset needs to go, and Rex really
might have shot himself in the foot on this one.
He is coaching to keep his job, I am not a coach nor have I been
one but common sense tells you that this is not going to help keep your job, it
is as simple as that.
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