Advice to Jets: Don’t rush Christian Hackenberg … or you’ll be sorry

11:29 AM ET

New Yorkers are always in a hurry. We sneer at people who stop on the sidewalk, we want the check now, we honk all the time …

And we rush our young quarterbacks.

The New York Jets did it in 2009 with Mark Sanchez and they did it again in 2013 with Geno Smith, throwing both players into the fire as rookies even though they weren’t ready. They took a slow and easy approach last year with Bryce Petty, but the situation was different than the others because he was only a fourth-round pick.

Now there’s Christian Hackenberg.

General manager Mike Maccagnan answers in riddles whenever he’s asked about the possibility of playing the second-round pick as a rookie. He won’t dismiss it, but he also says it’s not the ideal option “in a perfect world.”

News flash: The Jets don’t live in a perfect world, especially at the quarterback position.

Double talk aside, we all know there’s only one choice for the Jets: Let the kid sit for a year. It’s the best decision for the team, an older group of win-now players, and it’s the best decision for Hackenberg, whose psyche and mechanics need to be re-calibrated after two mentally and physically taxing seasons at Penn State.

“I don’t think he’s ready to play right away,” ESPN draft analyst …

continue reading in source espn.go.com