Manish Mehta paints a sobering picture of the Jets' locker room not being completely behind Mark Sanchez in an article.
"We have to bring in another quarterback that will make him work at practice," said one player. "He’s lazy and content because he knows he’s not going to be benched."
..."They don’t want to be truthful with him," one prominent player said of the way that the organization has handled Sanchez. "They treat him like a baby instead of a man. He goes in a hole when someone tells him the truth."
A Jets spokesman declined to make Sanchez available for this story. A source close to the team pointed out that Sanchez’s inability to handle mounting criticism prompted him to unfollow every Jets beat writer on Twitter earlier this season.
"So that should tell you everything," the source said. "He just doesn’t have the mental toughness to be great... especially in New York."
You always have to love the people who won't put their names to stuff like this.
This also serves as another disturbing piece of evidence that Rex Ryan has no idea how to get this team under control. Whatever he is trying to do to bring team unity is clearly not working with these continuing leaks.
The biggest takeaway, though, is this team is not completely behind its quarterback. No matter what you think about the way people are airing this sentiment (and I think badly of it), people in the locker room questioning the quarterback is a huge deal. I'm not entirely surprised to hear this. There are subtle things you can see on the field like Sanchez's lack of willingness to step into a throw to complete a pass when it means getting hit hard. That became pretty obvious as the year went on. We talk about the lack of leadership on this team. It starts with the quarterback. Teams that believe in their quarterback and respect him usually do not have the kind of sniping behind the scenes the Jets have had. They rally behind their leader in bad times. Sanchez does have defenders in the organization according to this article who point out the offensive line's shaky play and criticize the game planning and play calling (surprise, surprise). Manish indicates, however, that most of the people he spoke with want a different quarterback. That is a really bad sign.