FITZ MY JOB!
IT IS the loneliest, darkest feeling an athlete can have, when your heart believes the men who own and manage the team you play for and the head coach who decides that you are no longer the right man to quarterback his team, your team, stop believing in you.
It shakes you to your core, so much so that you need time to steady yourself as you ponder the sudden, unceremonious end of the dream that was going to take you to your first playoff football in January, finally, after all these trying years trying and all those places you called home, maybe forever. Shipwrecked on Ryan Island. “The biggest thing in this game in order to last,” Ryan Fitzpatrick said after relieving an injured Geno Smith late in the first half and engineering a 24-16 victory over the depleted Ravens that keeps the Jets on life support, “is to have belief in yourself, because when the owner stops believing in you and the GM stops believing in you and the coaches stop believing in you, sometimes all you have is yourself.
“That’s kind of something I’ve had to deal with before, something I’m dealing with now. I just do the best to prepare and be the best quarterback I can be.”
He was the $12 Million Quarterback who had lost his job because he had not been the best quarterback he could be, throwing those 11 interceptions and giving Todd Bowles no choice but to turn to Geno Smith.
On Sunday, he remembered how to be the best quarterback he can be, and Smith’s wounded knee is the convenient excuse Bowles needs for Fitzpatrick II when the 2-5 Jets travel to Cleveland.
“I don’t know what decision they’re gonna make or what Geno’s health is gonna be like,” Fitzpatrick said. “But yeah, think I should start every week.”
What matters most is that Fitzpatrick never stopped believing in himself. It is impossible for your teammates to believe in you if they see or sense that you have stopped believing in yourself.
“It’s not easy, but I think my teammates believing in me is a big thing,” Fitzpatrick said. “Their opinion of me, that’s kind of what drives me and what matters. And so I know I still have that belief in the huddle, so that’s important to me.
“I’m human, so it’s not the easiest thing in the world to deal with, but it’s something that I have dealt with, and again, relying on my support system and believing in myself is kind of the biggest thing.”
It is Fitzpatrick’s humanity that helps make him a leader, helps rally his teammates to his side. He did this to himself, of course, by not taking care of the football, but if calling out the owner and the general manager and the head coach for strip-sacking him grows this giant chip on his shoulder, perhaps he can play better angry. Fitzpatrick isn’t the only one who noticed how Bowles reversed field one day after vowing he would remain the starter.
“I probably play better as an underdog, pissed off,” Fitzpatrick said, “and so, going forward, yeah I’m gonna be pissed off.”
Smith (4-8, 95 yards, one touchdown) was sacked by Matt Judon, and his afternoon was over.
“Do I need to warm up?” Fitzpatrick asked Smith. “Yeah,” Smith said. Fitzpatrick trotted back into his old huddle with 4:34 left in the first half with his sense of humor intact before directing a touchdown drive that culminated in a 13-yard touchdown pass to Matt Forte.
“He came in the huddle and said, ‘What’s up, guys,’ like he was new or something,” Forte said. “He likes to keep it loose and have fun.”
At the end of a week that was pure hell.
“Got into the huddle and we almost all had to laugh at the situation, and the irony of it,” Fitzpatrick said. “Not because Geno got hurt obviously, but just being thrown back in there.”
Fitzpatrick (9-14, 120 yards, one touchdown) managed a game where Forte (101 rushing yards, 54 receiving yards, two touchdowns) and Gang Green (three takeaways) did the heavy lifting.
“Kinda that same feeling that we had last year, the energy and the passion,” Fitzpatrick said. “I think today was a good indication and just a good showing for everybody else, all our fans, that we’re not done yet, we’re not throwing in the towel.”
Smith, who wanted to go back in, was standing at a postgame podium without severe discomfort and was scheduled for an MRI exam. Another cruel twist of fate for him.
“I feel for him,” Fitzpatrick said.
The two of them chatted amiably at their neighboring lockers afterwards.
“It was a really strange couple of days coming in, a newfound role, and just having to really take a step back, no longer being in that role of starting quarterback slash leader slash in the huddle all the time there in practice, and having to take a step back and kinda watch,” Fitzpatrick said. “Yeah, it’s an awkward situation, a situation I don’t like being in. You try to get over it, and it took me a couple of days. And I told Geno, I told a couple of guys, ‘I’m gonna need a couple of days for this one,’ just to let it sink in.
Bowles wisely waited this time on a quarterback verdict. I’d go back to Fitzpatrick.
“I’ll be ready,” he said.