FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — The New York Jets have spent much of the offseason involved in a game of chicken with two of their best players. Now they must hope that losing the stare down with left tackle D’Brickashaw Ferguson will allow them to keep quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick.
Ferguson stunned the NFL — but perhaps not the Jets — on Friday, when he announced his retirement after 10 seasons. The almost bionically durable Ferguson — he missed just one snap in his career, and that was for a gadget play on the final snap of the 2008 regular season — began to tail off last season and the Jets had not communicated with him for months as they tried to coerce him into taking a pay cut from his salary of $10.375 million.
General manager Mike Maccagnan finally approached Ferguson with a proposal last week, but ESPNNewYork.com reported Friday that Ferguson was already considering retirement. The 32-year-old wrote a column for SI.com last season about how jarring it was to see the movie “Concussion” and to consider the potential long-term effects of playing football.
In addition, ESPNNewYork.com reported Ferguson never forgot how the Jets treated former teammate Alan Faneca, a potential Hall of Famer who was cut by the team as soon as it drafted his replacement, Vladimir Ducasse, in the second round of the 2010 draft.
The Jets were clearly preparing for life without Ferguson when they gave him the silent treatment. And they didn’t wait long to find his replacement: On Saturday, the Jets sent a fifth-round pick in this month’s draft to the Denver Broncos in exchange for Ryan Clady and a seventh-round pick.
The Jets also signed Clady to a contract that will pay him $6 million ($3 million guaranteed) in 2016. That takes up a chunk of the change saved by Ferguson’s retirement, which netted the Jets more than $9 million in cap charges, but there’s still money to play with in trying to close the gap between the Jets and Fitzpatrick, who have been locked in a stalemate for the entire offseason.
Fitzpatrick, who had the best year of his career in leading the Jets to the verge of the playoffs in 2015, is reportedly asking for $16 million a year while the Jets are offering the 33-year-old journeyman between $7 and $9 million.
“Our goal eventually is ultimately to get Ryan under contract and go forward,” Maccagnan said on March 18.
That seems to be Fitzpatrick’s intention as well. It was telling when Fitzpatrick, who lives in Arizona during the offseason, was in the audience at Radio City Music Hall in New York City on March 30, when New York sports talk show hosts Mike Francesa and Chris Russo reunited for a charity show.
But despite how much success Fitzpatrick and the Jets enjoyed together last season, each side seems willing to wait until the other one caves, no matter what the cost.
The Jets, whose default No. 1 quarterback at the moment is the unpopular Geno Smith, have tried to make Fitzpatrick sweat by having Robert Griffin III in for a get-to-know-you visit before he eventually signed with the Cleveland Browns. The Jets have also been loosely connected to Josh McCown, who lost his job as the Browns’ starter when Griffin arrived, and Brian Hoyer, who was supplanted by Brock Osweiler in Houston.
Fitzpatrick is certainly imperfect — he was just 33-55-1 as a starter prior to joining the Jets and engendered memories of the bad ol’ days on Jan. 3, when he threw three interceptions as the Jets were eliminated from playoff contention with a 22-17 loss to the Buffalo Bills — but he would seem to be far better than those alternatives.
The Jets know what they have (and don’t have) in Smith, who went 11-18 as a starter before losing his job after a locker-room fight with ex-teammate IK Enemkpali. McCown was solid recently for the Browns and Chicago Bears, but he’ll be 37 by the time training camp opens and has never spent a full season as a starter. And Hoyer authored a poor playoff performance in the wild-card round in January, when he threw four interceptions as the Texans were blanked by the Kansas City Chiefs, 30-0.
And Fitzpatrick probably won’t find a better situation for him than with the Jets, who have an impressive 1-2 punch at wide receiver in wide receiver Brandon Marshall and Eric Decker as well as running back in Matt Forte, who signed with New York on March 9 after eight seasons with the Chicago Bears.
Would Fitzpatrick pursue a higher salary with a rebuilding team such as the Los Angeles Rams or San Francisco 49ers and run the risk of spending what remains of his prime in football purgatory?
The real wild card in the stalemate belongs to the defending Super Bowl champion Denver Broncos, who lost their top two signal-callers to retirement (Peyton Manning) and free agency (Osweiler). The Broncos’ current starter is Mark Sanchez, whom they acquired from the Philadelphia Eagles, but they have been reportedly been trying to acquire Colin Kaepernick from the San Francisco 49ers.
Fitzpatrick’s leverage lasts as long as the Broncos don’t have a viable NFL starter at quarterback. If the Broncos land Kaepernick or someone else, it’ll increase the odds the Jets get Fitzpatrick at their price.
But what if Fitzpatrick ends up with the Broncos’ job and slams the Jets’ Super Bowl window shut? Wouldn’t the sight of Fitzpatrick leading the defending Super Bowl champions on to the field — with ex-Jets wunderkind Sanchez right behind him — rank as one of the most embarrassing moments in team history?
“Eventually, hopefully, we find a middle ground at some point,” Maccagnan said.
Perhaps Ferguson’s retirement will hasten that process. The season might depend on it.