FLY FISHING
THE horrors of learning your craft on the fly on a 4-10 Jets team belted Bryce Petty in the solar plexus and left him flat on his back on the first play of the fourth quarter of another game that won’t do Todd Bowles any favors.
Ndamukong Suh and Cameron Wake made themselves a Petty sandwich and sent him airborne just as the poor kid delivered a 28-yard pass to Robby Anderson. Fi- nally, a TKO’d Petty, the wind knocked out of him, walked ever so slowly off the field, replaced by Ryan Fitzpatrick.
Growing pains are bad enough.
But pain too?
Heaven help Bryce Petty.
Petty gave you the Good, the Bad and the Ugly in Saturday night’s 34-13 loss to the Dolphins. The Good: He looked poised
and confident at the start, hitting Robby Anderson in stride on a slant for a 40-yard touchdown.
The Good: Anytime he handed off or checked it down to Bilal Powell.
The Bad: Petty was stripsacked on third-and-4 at the Miami 14 by Wake and Suh recovered.
The Ugly: A gift interception in the right flat to Wake on a ball nowhere near Brandon Marshall.
The Bad: Petty held the ball for an eternity and was sacked from behind by Isa Abdul Quddus.
The Good: He showed smarts throwing the ball away when nothing was there before dumping it off on third-and-10 to Powell for 16 yards on the twominute drive before the half that resulted in a 48-yard Nick Folk field goal.
The Bad: A slightly underthrown bomb down the left sideline for Anderson against single coverage that was picked off by Tony Lippett.
Of course, compared to the bad and the ugly, the Jets special teams and defense provided in the second half, Petty was Broadway Joe.
But these are what growing pains look like.
Former Jets quarterback Chad Pennington, who always was long on fight and moxie, liked Petty’s demeanor against San Francisco.
“He did show some grit and determination and desire. … He showed some intangibles that you just quite frankly can’t coach,” Pennington told The Post, “and I think that’s important when you’re evaluating a player that you see those things. A lot of times, it’s not about the X’s and O’s as much as it is about the player’s will to win and desire to win and how he leads his team and wills his team to victory.”
Pennington, who was watch- ing Saturday night from the suites, was looking for Petty to get the ball out of his hand quickly and more pocket presence in his third start — which he displayed at times, mostly in the first half.
“A pass is one that you see timing, you see anticipation, you see the right zip, the right touch, the right air up underneath the ball,” Pennington said. “You want to start to see more of that, which means he’s starting to grasp the offense more, and starting to anticipate things happening instead of just reacting and making throws down the field when you’re late or when you’re scrambling. He did a really good job [against the 49ers] of extending a couple of plays with his feet and still remaining a passer, so now you’d like to see him start to operate a little bit more efficiently in the pocket and make some of those passes.”
Pennington was a sponge learning under Vinny Testaverde. Ryan Fitzpatrick has been a valuable resource for Petty.
“I think having Ryan there, just like I had Vinny, that was a huge positive,” Pennington said. “Especially for someone who is essentially drinking NFL information through a firehouse.” Then he laughed. Pennington didn’t make his first start until five games into his third season, and he hit the ground running and led the Jets to the playoffs.
“The light bulb went on that third year,” he said. “Things really clicked for me mentally and physically. I felt like I took a step back from Year 1 to Year 2, mainly because of having to learn a new system and a new set of footwork and things like that with the West Coast system that Paul Hackett wanted to implement. But the third year, and the second year in that system, it really came into clear focus for me.”
Petty, as a fourth-round draft choice, doesn’t yet have the same pressures as a designated Quarterback of the Future, which Pennington was as a firstround draft in 2000.
“It’s a nice opportunity for him just to kind of play ball and not have to worry about a whole lot,” Pennington said.
Whether or not Petty barges into the quarterback of the future conversation, Pennington offers sage advice for any Jets quarterback.
“I think you have to have people around you that help you maintain a healthy perspective,” Pennington said. “When your perspective is healthy and your mindset is healthy, then you can operate and play and handle the questions and criticisms and all the things that come with it. And it can be a very rewarding experience. If you don’t have the right people around you to kinda help you maintain that healthy perspective, it can get to where you feel like the walls are closing in on you, and it becomes a very negative environment. You feel more pressure than what you should.
“That’s the easiest thing to do is to fall into thinking that you gotta save the world every time you step out on the field and the whole world’s on your shoulders and those types of things. That would be my best advice, would be to have people surrounded around him that can help him maintain an overall big-picture perspective, to kind of take you outside of the microcosm that is playing in New York and look at it from a bigpicture perspective, and then that kind of helps you put everything into place. Because if you don’t, it can be overwhelming.”
It’s overwhelming enough having to learn your craft on the fly surrounded by a 4-10 team as you do.