”I think he (Sanchez) is going to be there, but I think he’s going to be the back-up quarterback next year.”
– Cris Collinsworth
Former New York Jet Kris Jenkins Joins As This Week’s Guest;
New Episode Airs Tonight at 9 p.m. ET/PT on SHOWTIME
NEW YORK (December 19, 2012) – James Brown, Phil Simms and Cris Collinsworth are joined by former New York Jet Kris Jenkins on tonight’s episode of INSIDE THE NFL to discuss the mess that the Jets have found themselves in this season. The panel of experts expressed their strong opinions regarding Mark Sanchez, Tim Tebow, and the team’s overall future.
The episode premieres tonight at 9 p.m. ET/PT on SHOWTIME.
INSIDE THE NFL, now in its 34th season, airs every Wednesday night through the NFL season on SHOWTIME, with multiple replays each week on SHOWTIME and SHOWTIME EXTREME® and availability on SHOWTIME On Demand.
INSIDE THE NFL is produced by CBS Sports and NFL Films. The executive producers are Sean McManus, Chairman, CBS Sports, and NFL Films. Pete Radovich Jr., the Emmy Award-winning Creative Director for CBS Sports, serves as coordinating producer.
Following are excerpts from this week’s episode:
When asked where the Jets go from here after Monday’s loss…
JENKINS: Nowhere. It is done. Stick a fork in them. Unfortunately I think the only thing that they are going to achieve for the next couple of years is being on somebody’s comedy reel. You can’t play like that. It’s done. I’m sick. I’ve been holding it in for a minute. I’m sick… It’s not football that they are doing. It is an organized business. They brought Tebow in, I still feel, for a business transaction (to) sell some jerseys and make everybody feel good. You have him backing up Sanchez. He can only throw the ball so far. He does a couple of things during third-and-short, fourth-and-short. That’s it. But he still played better then Vernon Gholston.It’s a lot of the picks that the Jets have picked over this time that haven’t helped.
On the issues that the Jets are faced with for the future…
COLLINSWORTH: A) They’ve got contracts that are going to bury them for the next couple of years with players that aren’t producing at the level of those contracts. But I think more importantly than that, it’s simple, they have to be able to throw the football better. I mean you could put the blame that they don’t have enough receivers, Sanchez, whatever you want to do, but since Mark Sanchez has been there they’ve never had a quarterback rating of 80 or above. And in the NFL today you just cannot win like that. Now you might get a Baltimore Ravens team occasionally that does and has a successful year, but you look around the National Football League. It is all built around throwing the football.
When asked what they would as the Jets GM…
COLLINSWORTH: I’m going completely new. I’m going completely different. I think that you either have a quarterback that can play like a Tom Brady or a Peyton Manning or you go get creative with what we are seeing out there, Colin Kaepernick, Russell Wilson. There are other ways to put points on the board, but right now they have neither.
SIMMS: A lot of issues when you talk about it. That was really as low as it could go for the New York Jets on Monday night. As I was watching it, I saw their team really just unravel, the situation unravels. Whatever thoughts they had of trying to make Mark Sanchez the quarterback for next year, they have to now re-evaluate that because it was the worst performance that they’ve had maybe in the four years that Rex Ryan has been here…The one thing in Mark Sanchez’s defense, they’ve never built the team or the offense around him.
JENKINS: Yes they did. They gave Sanchez everything.
SIMMS: They started to try a little bit in the third year but when you look at it, what’s been the motto? ‘Hey Mark, we got him here to manage the game.’ Now why would you ask a rookie quarterback to come in and manage a football game? That is a hard thing to do, to play quarterback in the NFL that way.
JENKINS: He (Sanchez) had a stellar offensive line. He had running backs that kept the pressure off of him. He had the opportunity to grow and develop. What Sanchez has to take responsibility for is during the time that he could have gotten better he wanted to sit back. He wanted to pose for magazines, worry about his haircuts and do all of that stuff… I’m just saying, from what I saw him do, it was a lot better then what it is now. But he coasted. They coddled him. That was what was going on. This is a man’s profession. You have to man up at some point in time and take care.
SIMMS: I am not exonerating him at all… I don’t know how he recovers from this in New York. The fans and the media and, more importantly, his teammates and coaches, they’ve had to have lost faith in what they saw. And physically, that’s what bothers me. Physically, in his first couple of years I said, ‘Wow, this guy physically has a chance to really get this done.’ But physically, it’s not as good. That’s what probably bothers me more then anything.
On whether or not Sanchez and Tebow will be back with the Jets next season…
SIMMS: I just think it’s a precarious situation… I just think that it’s going to be really hard to sell that. You’re going to come back with the same thought process on offense as a team or having that type of quarterback situation.
COLLINSWORTH: I think he (Sanchez) is going to be there, but I think he’s going to be the back-up quarterback next year. And I think that they will have somebody come in as a starting quarterback. But he gets paid too much money and it’s all guaranteed. There is no reason to not have him as a back-up quarterback.
SIMMS: You can’t make this decision because of money. That’s what I believe.
JENKINS: I think that if you leave Sanchez in that locker room he is going to become a bad apple… And the locker room has been fragile for the past two years.
COLLINSWORTH: That’s not his style. He’s not a bad apple guy.
SIMMS: You know what. He handled that Tim Tebow situation better then all other quarterbacks in the NFL would have handled it…
JENKINS: You’re going to have Sanchez backing up a quarterback, which means that Sanchez could be going in, which means that any quarterback relationship, he is going to ask Sanchez at some point for some advice. This isn’t good for whatever quarterback comes in unless they are experienced enough to really know…
COLLINSWORTH: I’ve seen it work with Alex Smith this year. Alex Smith has a 104 quarterback rating. He’s a star out there. He may win the passing title this year but he’s made it work because somebody better came in there.
JENKINS: You know Alex Smith is going to get a job somewhere else too. Sanchez won’t.
COLLINSWORTH: Maybe with New York.
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