Jets were supposed to tank in 2017, but Josh McCown had other plans

Behold the McCownaissance: At age 38, Josh McCown is proving he’s a viable NFL quarterback.

The New York Jets were expected to tank in 2017. Before the season could begin, they cut veterans like Eric Decker and David Harris and shed salary by letting players like Brandon Marshall and Marcus Gilchrist depart as free agents and turning to younger, cheaper players in their stead. The capper was the addition of Josh McCown to a quarterback platoon that included 2016 failures Bryce Petty and Christian Hackenberg.

McCown, coming off a season in which he went 0-3 as a starter for the Browns and completed less than 55 percent of his passes, failed to change the narrative that New York was punting on its 2017. The Jets would be the eighth stop on a whistle-tour career. In the last two seasons in which he started at least eight games — 2014 with the Buccaneers and 2015 with the Browns — his teams went 1-10 and 1-7, respectively. Over the course of a 15-year career, his forte became losing games; McCown was the NFL’s divining rod for rock bottom.

The Jets signed him for one year and $6 million in an apparent effort to find bedrock, the final lecture in a master’s class on tanking. Instead, it was the beginning of the McCownaissance.

McCown’s 5-7 record with New York may not look like much, but the veteran has put together one of his finest seasons to drag the Jets to respectability. His team went off script in Week 3 with a thorough 20-6 win over the Dolphins. After two more wins got them a surprise .500 record, they nearly upset the Patriots in a game with the AFC East lead on the line. Even after a series of fourth-quarter letdowns seemingly put them back on track for a high draft pick, McCown changed the narrative again by adding another chapter to his comeback story in Week 13.

He led New York back from a 14-0 deficit to stun the AFC West-leading Chiefs by throwing for 331 yards and a touchdown. He rushed for two more to carve up a once-fearsome defense and lead the Jets to a shootout victory that kept their slim playoff hopes alive.

Head coach Todd Bowles has already said that McCown will be the starter for the rest of the season. If McCown stays healthy, it’ll be the first time in his career he’s started 16 games in a season.

It’s an under-the-radar comeback story grayed out by the malaise that’s engulfed Jets football. With McCown — 18-42 as a starting quarterback before coming to New York — at the helm, the club has landed closer to a playoff spot in the AFC than the No. 1 pick in the 2018 draft.

So how is he doing it?

McCown is doing more with less to ruin the Jets’ tanking effort

Heading into the 2017 season, New York boasted one of the league’s most anonymous receiving corps. When Quincy Enunwa went down with a neck injury in the preseason, the Jets’ WR depth chart was some combination of these six players:

• Robby Anderson
• Charone Peake
• Jalin Marshall
• ArDarius Stewart
• Chad Hansen
• Jeremy Kerley

A trade that swapped disgruntled defensive lineman Sheldon Richardson for Jermaine Kearse helped bolster that group, but it still remains the first thing you’d blow up in franchise mode of Madden ‘17. Despite that lack of skill players — and his team’s eternally frustrating lineup of underwhelming tight ends — McCown has turned the Jets into the league’s eighth-most efficient passing offense. He’s even earned AFC Offensive Player of the Week honors for third time in his career after extinguishing the Chiefs.

The veteran passer hasn’t exactly been prolific — Week 13’s effort was just his third 300-plus yard game of the season — but he’s leveled up his accuracy and taken advantage of the short- to mid-range passes offensive coordinator John Morton has laid out. After completing 54.5 percent of his attempts last fall, McCown has his average up to 67.8 percent, higher than Matt Ryan. His interception ratio has fallen from last year’s 3.6 to a manageable 2.1, lower than Ben Roethlisberger. His yards per pass average is up to 7.5 yards, higher than Russell Wilson’s 2017 mark.

That, coupled with some timely play-action calls, has created the kind of downfield opportunities McCown exploited in Week 13 to upset Kansas City. After 12 games, McCown has established himself as a steady presence in the upper half of the league’s quarterback stats. Here’s where he rates out against 2017’s best passers.

The other fun wrinkle of McCown’s resurgent 2017 is his willingness to scramble and extend drives. No one would ever confuse the 38-year-old with Cam Newton, but he’s already set a career-high with five rushing touchdowns this fall — only six players in the entire NFL have more this season. He’s had five carries of 10 yards or more and twice as many 20-plus yard gains on the ground than running backs like Frank Gore, Lamar Miller, or Doug Martin.

That’s cute, but what has he done against the NFL’s best defenses?

McCown and the Jets have faced three of the league’s top 11 passing defenses (in terms of QB rating allowed). He’s 2-2 in those games, with losses coming against New England and Buffalo.

In the process, he’s thrown for 354 yards against a rebounding Patriots secondary, completed 71 percent of his passes against the top-ranked Jaguars defense in an overtime win, and thrown for 307 yards and three touchdowns against a Carolina team likely destined for a spot in the NFC playoffs.

In his last six games, he’s averaged 251 passing yards, 1.8 touchdowns, and 0.3 interceptions per contest while leading an offense that was cut down to a skeleton in 2017. The Jets may have gone 2-4 over that span, but it’s tough to fault McCown for the team’s struggles given the myriad holes across the lineup.

All things considered, that’s a pretty solid resume — the second-best statistical profile of his career. The only time he’s been better was 2013, when he made five starts in Chicago for an injured Jay Cutler and posted a 13:1 TD:INT ratio. That led him to a two-year, $10 million contract with Tampa Bay — a boon after a series of one-year veteran’s minimum deals.

But what comes next for McCown?

At a salary of just $6 million this season, McCown has been one of the league’s biggest bargains. His quarterback rating through 12 games is higher than Joe Flacco ($24.5 million in 2017), Matt Ryan ($23.7 million), and Cam Newton ($20.1 million).

Typically, a performance like his 2017 would be the harbinger of a massive contract — especially in a league where Mike Glennon can sign a $45 million deal after throwing 11 passes the previous two seasons.

That won’t be the case for McCown. As his 39th birthday approaches, his advanced age and history of inconsistency will make him a lottery ticket in 2018 and beyond. That makes him a worthwhile gamble for a team looking for a stopgap measure behind center — a plug-and-play option to bridge the franchise’s present and its future.

However, a history littered with broken franchises and losing seasons ensures McCown won’t be anyone’s first choice in a potentially loaded class of free agent passers. Kirk Cousins and Washington are headed for a nasty divorce. Minnesota can’t possibly keep all three of its impending free agent quarterbacks, so one or all of the Teddy Bridgewater, Case Keenum, and Sam Bradford trifecta will be available this offseason. Eli Manning and Blake Bortles could both be searching for new homes as well. Even Drew Brees, as unlikely as a relocation seems, is set to become a free agent in 2018.

Several destinations could work for a 39-year-old passer looking to prove 2017 was no outlier. New York could bring him back and have him compete for its starting job once more, this time against whatever young quarterback the Jets pick up to usher Bryce Petty and Christian Hackenberg out the door. The Jaguars, if spurned in their attempts to lure Manning south, could opt for the Big Apple’s other effective veteran QB. Denver could use him as the soft transition between 2017’s tire fire and the official Paxton Lynch/Josh Allen/Josh Rosen era.

Which is to say it’s tough to buy in on McCown as more than a one-year wonder for reasons that go beyond the fact he’s nearly 40. His track record of up-and-down performances and lost seasons on bad teams make him a tough sell no matter how strong his 2017 season is. He’s proving something in New York, however: that he’s smart and accurate enough to turn a guy like Robby Anderson into a Pro Bowl receiver.

That’s probably not what the Jets were looking for as they sold off pieces in advance of a rebuild, but it’s a great reminder of just how surprising McCown’s mini-revival has been. The odds a 39-year-old journeyman can do this again for his ninth NFL team in 2018 are low — but the first three-quarters of the season have shown McCown is no longer your go-to guy for a total teardown.