It seems like every quarterback the New York Jets acquire ends up being a failure.
Since 2000, the Jets have taken seven quarterbacks in the first or second round.
Chad Pennington, the 18th pick in 2000, is arguably the best player on a team that included Mark Sanchez, Kellen Clemens, Geno Smith, Christian Hackenberg, Sam Darnold and Zach Wilson.
Even Aaron Rodgers, the four-time MVP they acquired in the trade, ruptured his Achilles after just his fourth play in a Jets uniform.
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New York Jets player Christian Hackenberg warms up before the game against the New England Patriots at Gillette Stadium on December 31, 2017 in Foxborough, Massachusetts. (Maddy Meyer/Getty Images)
One of the seven quarterbacks said the Jets “didn’t have a plan” when he was with the team.
Despite having Smith and Ryan Fitzpatrick on the Jets’ side, the Jets selected Hackenberg with the 51st pick in the 2016 NFL Draft after Fitzpatrick had become the team’s first quarterback to throw 30 touchdown passes a few months earlier.
It just didn’t seem to make sense for the Jets to select Hackenberg despite the high expectations coming out of Penn State, and Hackenberg seems to agree.
New York Jets quarterback Christian Hackenberg plays in a preseason game against the Philadelphia Eagles at MetLife Stadium on August 31, 2017 in East Rutherford, New Jersey. (Rich Glaesl/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
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“New York was probably not a place I should have gone given the market, the expectations and the situation at the time.” “It’s a big deal,” Hackenberg said on the Ross Tucker Football Podcast. Wednesday. “My rookie year, we ended up with four quarterbacks (Smith, Fitzpatrick and 2015 fourth-round draft pick Bryce Petty), so there wasn’t a lot of opportunity for me to develop.”
“It was an organization with no plan and a lot of ups and downs. I think the timing and the outcome were just unexpected for me in that position.”
Hackenberg has never played a regular-season game for the Jets or even in the NFL, having been traded for a 2018 seventh-round pick.
Hackenberg was a top-flight high school quarterback, throwing for nearly 9,000 yards in three seasons at Penn State, but he never lived up to the expectations and draft praise he received.
Looking back, Hackenberg seems to acknowledge he wasn’t ready.
New York Jets quarterback Christian Hackenberg calls a play during a preseason game against the New York Giants at MetLife Stadium on August 26, 2017 in East Rutherford, New Jersey. (Al Pereira/Getty Images)
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“There’s a lot of context involved, and when I came out, I knew I still had a lot of things I had to improve on,” Hackenberg said, “but at the same time, there was all this expectation and public opinion that this kid was going to be good. It was really kind of a battle with the messaging and the way things were portrayed, both internally and externally, that I had to deal with.”
The Jets haven’t been to the playoffs since 2010.
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