Todd Bowles was kidding, of course, that spring day when he slammed a fist on the press room podium and bellowed: “I WANT HIM TO PLAY RIGHT NOW!”
Jets fans — young and old — who have been waiting the better part of a lifetime for their Joe Namath are dead serious about wanting Sam Darnold to play right now.
Three months later, Darnold gets his first chance in Friday’s preseason opener against the Falcons to convince Bowles to play him right now, when the 2018 regular season begins.
Jets fans have learned it is no pipe dream, but a tantalizing, titillating dream worth dreaming.
The starting quarterback job is there for the taking.
Go out there and take it, kid.
Three months after Darnold’s first minicamp practice, you cannot find anyone around the Atlantic Health Training Center who thinks he will show up on his first NFL gameday with the yips when he runs through the MetLife Stadium tunnel and realizes he isn’t playing UCLA or Stanford anymore.
Ask Terrelle Pryor about Darnold and he says: “Awesome.”
Ask Pryor why, and he says: “Nothing’s too big for him.”
It wouldn’t be the end of the world if Josh McCown — or Teddy Bridgewater, if he isn’t traded — were to open the season in the Lions’ den in Detroit on “Monday Night Football.”
It wouldn’t be the end of the world if Bowles were to err on the side of caution and ask McCown to start the season as something more than a $10 million insurance policy.
Bowles both needs to win games and develop Darnold so Jets liftoff arrives in 2019, and not necessarily in that order.
But as soon as Darnold is handed the keys to the Johnson and Johnson Jets, it will mark a new beginning of the endless crusade to slay the Patriots, with the kid quarterback who is 20 years younger than Tom Brady.
Jets fans who show up wearing their green No. 14 jerseys — and more than a few who will be wearing 12 and 24 — hope to watch Darnold get his feet wet and head to the parking lots gushing: I WANT HIM TO PLAY RIGHT NOW!
Darnold has yet to play a game, but Jets fans seem to have forgiven GM Mike Maccagnan for drafting Christian Hackenberg in the second round in 2016.
Luck may be the residue of design, but Maccagnan maneuvered beautifully when he surrendered three second-round picks to move up to a position where Darnold fell right in his lap.
Payback, perhaps, from the football gods for the Falcons beating the Jets to Brett Favre and leaving them with Browning Nagle.
That was 27 years and zero franchise quarterbacks ago.
The Journeyman, The Comeback Kid and The Savior, each cheering the other two on.
Before Darnold can be The Savior, he needs to win the job.
All eyes on Sam Darnold. The future is tomorrow for him. His first chance Friday night to make it right now.
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