Will Bryce Petty replace Geno Smith?

The New York Jets added another quarterback through the NFL Draft on Saturday, in Baylor’s Bryce Petty. Will he replace Geno Smith?

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The Jets are making things interesting once again, by adding yet another quarterback to the mix. New York traded with the Jaguars, giving up their 4th round pick and a 7th round pick in order to move up and take Baylor quarterback Bryce Petty. This means that the Jets should be headed into training camp with three quarterbacks on their active roster, barring any kind of injury, or say, acquisition of a fourth quarterback.

Currently those quarterbacks are Petty, Geno Smith and Ryan Fitzpatrick. What this also means is that Smith and Fitzpatrick are likely going to have to fight for their jobs.

Undoubtedly part of why the Jets grabbed Petty was to keep him away from the rival Bills who actually met with Petty just before the Draft, showing some real interest on their part. However, the other obvious way to look at it is that the Jets don’t have faith in either Smith or Fitzpatrick to take over the starting role. The thing is though, most analysts think that Petty needs up to two years redshirting in the NFL before he’ll actually be ready to start. That hardly suggests he can come in and immediately replace Smith, who probably would have also benefited from some redshirting.

Here are four reasons why Petty will not replace Smith:

1. Like it or not, Smith still has more NFL experience than Petty at this point and he’s already been thrown into the fire, so to speak, so it’s likely that management will want to give him another chance to prove he is a starter in the league.

2. As previously mentioned, most analysts agree that Petty needs to sit for a year or two before playing in the NFL. What’s the point in throwing another untested quarterback out there and watching him fail when you could throw the one you have out and see if he can figure it out?

3. Petty is widely believed to be a system quarterback. He has a great arm, but has so far had limited exposure to pro concepts, coming out of a simple system. He’s similar to Geno Smith in that way and again, why throw him out there and end up with Geno part 2? He would benefit greatly from learning from Chan Gailey for a few years and then maybe he can legitimately take over.

4. He can give Geno Smith competition at the very least. Even if the Jets management has no intentions of replacing Smith with Petty, they don’t have to say that and maybe the competition will help both quarterbacks.

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