The Jets are boring.
Before you think that is a knock, hear me out. This is not a bad thing. The Jets broke training camp Monday. You probably did not notice because this has been the quietest training camp the Jets have had in years.
While Jets rivals like the Bills, Patriots and even the usually quiet crosstown Giants have dealt with rocky summers, the Jets have been cruising along, enjoying their Camp Quiet. The biggest stories of Jets camp have been the minor scuffle between Darrelle Revis and Brandon Marshall and how many quarterbacks the Jets should keep.
That’s right. Jets camp is so dull that we are not debating who the starting quarterback should be. We’re debating who the backup quarterback should be! And, oh yes, whether fourth-stringer Christian Hackenberg is getting enough work in the preseason.
Where have you gone, Tim Tebow?
This is just what Woody Johnson wanted when he hired the coach/general manager tandem of Todd Bowles and Mike Maccagnan in 2015. He wanted to hire men who would bring him wins, of course, but he also wanted leaders to quiet the noise around the team.
Mission accomplished.
The Jets are now as quiet as a library on a Saturday night.
Up the road, old friend Rex Ryan has had a brutal training camp filled with key injuries and suspensions. In New England, the Patriots are dealing with injuries to Dion Lewis and Sebastian Vollmer and have the Tom Brady suspension looming. In East Rutherford, the Giants are now fielding questions about how they handled kicker Josh Brown after domestic violence allegations surfaced.
Meanwhile, Bowles fields another question about Hackenberg’s playing time.
The quiet means fewer back pages, but does it mean more wins? Only time will tell, but having a summer like this can’t hurt. The Jets have been able to concentrate on football with no distractions popping up. When is the last time you could say that?
Camp chaos even predated Rex. In the summer of 2008, the team brought in quarterback Brett Favre the day before the preseason opener, making that a crazy training camp.
The following season featured the arrival of Ryan as carnival barker and rookie quarterback Mark Sanchez.
The “Hard Knocks” cameras captured all of the fun of 2010, including the Revis holdout.
In 2011, Jets players made boasts every day about how far that team would go with Plaxico Burress, Santonio Holmes and Derrick Mason promising to light up scoreboards. The team went 8-8.
Tebow stole the show in 2012 with ESPN’s cameras seemingly everywhere to document the worst experiment since New Coke.
The camps of 2013 and 2014 featured more quarterback drama with Sanchez and Geno Smith facing off in ’13 and then the great non-competition competition of 2014 between Smith and Michael Vick.
Last year, in Bowles’ first season as coach, it was quiet until IK Enemkpali started throwing haymakers.
But this year the drama was over before camp began. Maccagnan made sure of that when he signed Muhammad Wilkerson to a long-term deal in mid-July and then locked up Ryan Fitzpatrick just minutes before the first meeting of training camp.
Since then, the Jets have been about as exciting as PBS.
The problem for many of those Jets teams that had exciting summers was the disappointing falls that followed them. Maybe for these Jets a sleepy summer will lead to a fantastic fall and a winning winter.
