Plenty of folks don't have very high expectations for the New York Jets.
With a quarterback room filled with Josh McCown, Bryce Petty and Christian Hackenberg, it's hard to blame them. But don't count Buster Skrine as one of them.
"You can't rebuild in New York," Skrine told ESPN. "Because y'all will eat us up. Ain't no rebuilding here. It's getting right to the point. This is a competing team. We still have the players to compete."
Brought in as a free-agent addition before the 2015 season, Skrine was an acquisition for a team that was ready to contend. That Jets squad finished just outside the playoffs with a 10-6 record, and things seemed to be trending toward a postseason appearance in 2016. Then the wheels fell off.
Skrine has a point: The Jets do still have a handful of players that make them somewhat competitive. But New York has also bid adieu to Nick Mangold, Brandon Marshall and Darrelle Revis, among others. It's been a signal that the team is deconstructing to start over with new pieces. The Jets are going young, and with youth and roster anonymity usually comes more losses than wins. But Skrine is under contract for three more seasons, so he has to trumpet his franchise's chances.
Having played for the Browns from 2011-2014, he's also been part of a few internal detonations.
"I'm going into my seventh year and I played for Cleveland, so I've seen it happen," he said. "Sometimes you have to figure out the right formula for the team, and I trust Coach (Todd) Bowles. Every morning, he's up at 4:30. I trust (Jets GM Mike) Maccagnan. I trust everybody. I know they've got something up their sleeve. They're going to make it work.
"At the end of the year, Bowles said, 'I'm not going to let y'all down this year. We're going to make it work. We're going to come in and I know things are going to change.' I know, going into next season, it's going to be a different atmosphere. I'm looking forward to it."
As always with competitive sport, if you don't believe your team will win the game, don't board the bus. And if you don't think your team will be very good in the upcoming season, definitely don't admit it in March. But let's take this with a grain of salt -- much like Alshon Jeffery's Super Bowl-winning Bears prediction before bolting for Philadelphia, overly ambitious predictions are easy to make in the offseason. We'll see if it holds up for Skrine and Gang Green in 2017.
