Jets Need Reality Check If They Plan to Continue Without Ryan Fitzpatrick

Last year, behind a career year from quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick, the New York Jets won 10 games. The team came up just short of its first playoff appearance since advancing to the AFC Championship Game in 2010.

With that near-miss comes increased expectations for the team in 2016. Dreams of a deep playoff run. Maybe even a trip to Houston and Super Bowl LI.

There’s only one problem. Fitzpatrick and the Jets remain at an impasse over a new contract for the veteran signal-caller. In fact, per reports the two sides aren’t especially close.

And make no mistake. Without Fitzpatrick in the fold, the Jets’ dream season is more than likely going to become a nightmare.

Mind you, the Jets have an offer on the table for the 33-year-old, who threw for a career-high 3,905 yards and 31 touchdowns in 2015. Per Ian Rapoport of NFL.com, it’s a frontloaded, three-year deal that’s been on said table since March:

While #Jets have OTAs, this offer waits for Ryan Fitzpatrick: 3 yrs, $24M that can be $36M with incentives. $12M in yr 1. More than $15M gtd

— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) May 31, 2016

March is also how long reports have been swirling that Fitzpatrick wants more than that. A lot more than that. According to Bob Glauber of Newsday, Fitzpatrick’s demands are rumored to be in the neighborhood of $16 to $18 million per season.

Now I’m no member of the cast of The Big Bang Theory, but by my math, the two sides are nowhere close to an agreement. Fitzpatrick wants the kind of money the Philadelphia Eagles gave to Sam Bradford and the Houston Texans gave to Brock Osweiler. The Jets, on the other hand, are thinking Eagles money, too…

The money—$7 million a season—they gave Chase Daniel to come in and back up Bradford.

The stalemate is starting to wear on the team as well. When OTAs got underway last week, star wide receivers Eric Decker and Brandon Marshall were nowhere to be found. Per Bleacher Report’s Jason Cole, Marshall’s absence was supposedly a coincidence:

Source said WR Brandon Marshall’s absence from #Jets OTAs does not have to do with Ryan Fitzpatrick. “No story.”

— Jason Cole (@JasonColeBR) May 26, 2016

According to Brian Costello of the New York Post, Decker wasn’t as coy:

OTAs are voluntary, so Decker is not violating any rules, just sending a message. #nyj

— Brian Costello (@BrianCoz) May 26, 2016

That’s far from the only concern the Jets have. Manish Mehta of the New York Daily News wrote Tuesday that some within the organization fear too may bridges have been burned already. “Jets sources,” Mehta said, “including players, now believe that Fitzpatrick is amenable to spurning them on principle and taking less money to play elsewhere. They no longer think that Fitzpatrick’s return is a fait accompli.”

There are some who think that’s just fine. Some pundits, like Dom Cosentino of NJ.com, think it’s high time for Fitzpatrick to either take what the Jets have offered or hit the bricks:

It’s over. The Jets won this negotiation. They didn’t misread the market; they understood it perfectly. Their offer—three years, with $12 million payable in the first year, plus reports of $6 million in each of the two years afterward, with NFL Media’s Ian Rapoport adding that $15 million is to be guaranteed—has been collecting dust for more than two months now. And it likely won’t budge much, if at all.

Yet: Fitzpatrick still hasn’t found another team willing to offer him more to be their …

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