Report: Jets believe Sam Darnold will win Week 1 starting job

The New York Jets do not want to implement Sam Darnold as their starting quarterback before the rookie is ready, but they apparently believe he will do enough between now and Week 1 to earn the job.

Manish Mehta of the New York Daily News reports that the Jets have been blown away by how quickly Darnold is learning, and they expect him to perform well enough in preseason games to prove he is ready to start at the NFL level. The team’s brass understands that the only way for Darnold to get better is to apply what he is learning in meetings and film sessions on the field. More from Mehta:

The notion that the Jets should sit Darnold to start the regular season because of their two veteran alternatives is rooted in faulty logic unless the rookie looks overwhelmed in the preseason that begins against the Falcons on Friday night.

Spoiler: There isn’t a soul in the organization that I’ve touched base with who believes that Darnold will look lost in the preseason.

As Mehta notes, no one expects Darnold to have a better grasp of playing quarterback at the NFL level than a 17-year veteran like Josh McCown. That would still be true five years from now if Darnold had another 39-year-old quarterback as a teammate, so the former USC star will be judged on more than just how much he knows compared to McCown and Teddy Bridgewater. The Jets clearly want him to seize the starting job, so part of the onus is on the team’s coaching staff to structure the playbook accordingly.

A report we heard earlier in the week seemed to indicate that Darnold is likely to be on the bench in Week 1, but the preseason is obviously going to dictate that. Darnold can’t lose the job in practice alone. The Jets have to see what he does in an actual game situation before making any decisions.