START HACK!

Jets should not wait on testing out Christian, play him in Week 1

Back The Hack. No Joshing Around. That’s my quarterback game plan for Mike Maccagnan and Todd Bowles. Maccagnan did the right thing not trading up for Mitchell Trubisky and then passing on Patrick Mahomes II and Deshaun Watson in the first round and DeShone Kizer in the second.

The Jets invested a second round pick on Christian Hackenberg last year and that’s too much capital to spend to then draft his replacement before he even gets the chance to step on the field.

The assumption is that Josh McCown, a less accomplished and more travelled journeyman than Ryan Fitzpatrick, will go into the season as the starter and then as soon as the Jets hit their first losing streak, Bowles will switch to Hackenberg.

There’s no reason to take the intermediate step.

McCown will be 38 in July, the Jets are his eighth team and his record as a starter is 18-42. What possible benefit is there to the Jets to let him open the season as the starter? Considering his track record, he is lucky to still have a job in the NFL.

If Hackenberg is going to be given the best opportunity to succeed, then he must be the opening day starter. Why wait until the Jets are 2-4 or 1-5? Then morale in the locker room will have slipped, injuries will have piled up and Hackenberg will be taking over a failed operation. He deserves the chance to be the guy from day one to prove what he can do. If he’s a complete disaster, then go to McCown or Bryce Petty to get the Jets through the season leading up to them taking a QB in next year’s deep QB draft.

This plan might not be beneficial to Bowles’ job security, but this is bigger than Bowles.

McCown has the reputation of being a great teammate and mentor. He is playing for the $6 million that Fitzpatrick turned down as part of the three-year offer the Jets made last year, opting to take the oneyear, $12 million. It would have been difficult for Fitz to transition from starter to backup with the Jets. McCown signed with the Jets with the expectation he will at the very least be given the chance to compete to start the season opener against the Bills, but if he doesn’t win the job, then his track record suggests he will do everything he can to help Hackenberg.

What about Petty? I saw enough in his limited time on the field last season to know that his future in the NFL is as a backup at best. The Jets, who are making the switch from an overpaid underachieving team of veterans to a hungry bunch of kids, need to dedicate this season to finding out about Hackenberg.

By now, everybody knows the draft class of 2018 is loaded with QB prospects: USC’s Sam Darnold, UCLA’s Josh Rosen and Wyoming’s Josh Allen. We also know teams making the transition the Jets are attempting tend to struggle as their young players develop. If by the end of the season the Jets are not convinced Hackenberg is their guy, if he has not shown enough flashes to think there are big things in his future, then they will certainly be in position to get one of the top three QBs.

Of course, a lot can change with any of the college QBs during the 2017 season. Potential franchise quarterbacks today could be considered projects one year later. That’s what happened to Hackenberg and Geno Smith. So, while next year appears to be among the best QB drafts since 2004 – Eli Manning, Ben Roethlisberger, Philip Rivers – that’s nothing the Jets can count on right now.

As a result, all their focus needs to be on Hackenberg.

Bad sign: Despite one of the worst QB years in team history, the closest Hackenberg came to getting on the field was when he was the only healthy backup behind Fitz in the final game of the season. Bowles went from Fitz to Geno to Fitz to Petty and back to Fitz.

Bowles said the plan all along was to redshirt Hackenberg his rookie year, which is coachspeak for saying he was just not ready and it would have been detrimental to the team and Hackenberg to let him play. He should have been given the chance to get some game experience in December to get used to the speed of the game. Nothing the Jets can do about that now.

The reviews on Hackenberg at training camp and then at practice during the season were not positive. Hackenberg played poorly at Penn State his last two seasons after a strong freshman year, but Maccagnan saw something that gave him the confidence to take him at least two rounds earlier than he was projected.

Even so, he didn’t even get a uniform on game day until the final day of the season. Meanwhile, Dak Prescott, a fourth round pick by the Cowboys, was 13-3 as a rookie and forced Tony Romo into retirement.

Hackenberg’s redshirt year is over. It’s time to take off the training wheels and see if the kid can fly.

Back The Hack. Not a bad motto for the season.