Jets' QB situation: It doesn't matter who starts Sunday, it's all about future now
Jets wide receiver Garrett Wilson, left, quarterback Justin Fields and coach Aaron Glenn stand on the sidelines prior to an NFL football game against the Miami Dolphins on Sept. 29 in Miami Gardens, Fla. Credit: AP/Logan Bowles
Aaron Glenn still won’t say who his starting quarterback will be on Sunday.
But he and the Jets said enough in words and actions this week to tell us all we need to know about the situation. By trading away two All-Pro defensive players for a stockpile of draft picks that undoubtedly will be used in some order and combination to take a stab at what they hope will be a franchise quarterback in the near future, the organization shouted that both current options for Sunday’s game against the Browns, Justin Fields and Tyrod Taylor, are merely temporary placeholders.
What Glenn then said about the Browns’ quarterback situation was even more disquieting.
“When it comes to their offense, I know exactly what the coach [Kevin Stefanski] is trying to do,” Glenn said on Wednesday. “He’s trying to do a good job of making sure that he brings this quarterback along slowly. They’re leaning on the run game and they’re obviously giving him a chance to get the ball out quick. I understand exactly what he’s going through trying to get his team offensively to be on the right track, somewhat similar to us, and I know this coach is going to work his [expletive] off to make sure he gets it there.”
Similar to the Jets? The Browns have a rookie quarterback in Dillon Gabriel whom they took in the third round of the draft and who will make his fifth NFL start on Sunday. Glenn has his choice between Fields, the fifth-year veteran who came here on a $40 million contract, and Taylor, who has been in the league for 15 years.
These two teams shouldn’t be anything alike in terms of how they are handling the position.
And yet clearly they are. Both teams are trying to win despite the play they are getting from their quarterbacks. They are trying to outmaneuver their own shortcomings in that area.
How sad for them.
How sad for us who have to watch it.
And how sad for those who have to play with it and through it.
Selling players for draft picks is one thing; selling the moves to the players who remain behind is another. That’s been the challenge for team brass since general manager Darren Mougey sent Sauce Gardner and Quinnen Williams away.
Glenn addressed the players who remained in Florham Park on Wednesday and told them that change is inevitable in the NFL. They all know that. Each week someone gets hurt and it’s the next man who steps up.
Those changes, though, usually are force majeure, and there is nothing anyone can really do about them. These changes? They’re force Mougey.
“You just have to adjust to it, and the team that does it the best will keep going and keep ascending,” Fields said this past week. “You can’t be surprised by change; that’s just what comes in this business, in this game. You just have to keep playing ball.”
All the signs point to Fields getting the first reps on Sunday. He was the only quarterback who spoke to reporters as a group this week and teams are required to make their starter available in such a way, so he has that going for him.
Fields probably wasn’t going to be the starter the last time the Jets played — which was just days after owner Woody Johnson pinned the team’s then-winless record on his play — but after Taylor was ruled out late in the week because of a knee injury, the Jets had no other choice but to go with Fields in Cincinnati. He wound up playing his best game as a Jet, throwing for 244 yards and a touchdown and rallying the team to its first win of the season.
He should get a chance to see if he can continue to play like that.
But it really doesn’t matter if he does or does not. This franchise’s vision has shifted from the games right in front of them to the future. No matter how much Glenn and Mougey want the focus to be on Cleveland, it’s really on Pittsburgh and Washington — the sites of the 2026 and 2027 NFL Drafts.
Fields? Taylor? They’re already history as of Tuesday’s trade deadline. They just get to stick around in New Jersey a little longer than Gardner and Williams did.
“We’ll have a quarterback,” Glenn said several times when he was asked about Sunday’s starter.
Will they really, though? Or is this another of those Glenn-isms in which he can backtrack on his statements and play with the timelines?
Referring to his previous goal of making Jets fans “proud” of the team, this week he amended that by saying he didn’t mean right now, he meant sometime in the future.
Maybe that’s what he means about the most important position on the team, too.
We’ll have a quarterback . . . someday.
Please, Aaron, just tell us when you do.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
