Ryan Fitzpatrick saga soldiers on

The New York Jets have been hoping to re-sign quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick throughout the offseason, but the two sides do not seem to be coming any closer to their goal before training camp.

The New York Jets have been looking to re-sign free agent quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick since their season ended horrifically in Buffalo. There have been many rumors and glimmers of hope, but as we head closer to training camp, the two sides seem to be as far apart as they ever have been.

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When it comes to this topic, there are multiple questions that need to be answered. Do the Jets absolutely need Fitzpatrick? When is it time for them to move on? What more could and should they offer in order to retain him?

To start off, it has been made pretty clear by the Fitzpatrick camp that the Jets will need to sacrifice a bit more than they would like to in order to bring him back to the team. At least one significant player would need to be released and it could jeopardize defensive end Muhammad Wilkerson‘s status with the team as well.

The question remains, how much are the Jets willing to give up to re-sign Fitzpatrick? General manager Mike Maccagnan has shown over the course of this offseason that he is not willing to mortgage the future for Fitzpatrick’s talents.

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In a perfect world, the Jets and Fitzpatrick could meet somewhere in the middle, but that hasn’t happened up until this point, so there is not much reason to believe that it will.

Unless both sides are willing to make sacrifices, it doesn’t appear as if a move will be made.

As for when the Jets should move on from Fitzpatrick, the clock is certainly ticking.

With training camp set to start at the tail-end of July, both sides are running out of time to get a deal done and reunite with each other.

It is hard to imagine the Jets letting this ordeal drag into the middle portion of training camp. At that point, they will need to focus on getting the team to gel together, and that is simply impossible to fully achieve with uncertainty at the quarterback position.

The biggest question of all is whether the Jets absolutely need to retain Fitzpatrick in order to duplicate their success from last season. It is certainly a tough question to answer, and that makes going with quarterback Geno Smith a very risky proposition.

Smith would absolutely have a nice arsenal of weapons with Brandon Marshall, Eric Decker and Matt Forte. He has great arm-strength and rushing ability, but does he have the mental ability to achieve what Fitzpatrick did last season?

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This whole saga involving Fitzpatrick and the Jets has been a very unfortunate one, and the future is looking fairly bleak at this point in time. Only time will tell as to what the ending of this story will be.