This Mike White charade is over.
The hype has vanished quicker than a New Yorker having a cup of coffee and a sweet roll.
And with White’s debacle of a game on Sunday, his jersey will be marked down 75 percent faster than Jeremy Lin’s Knicks jersey was after Linsanity took its dirt nap.
White is not the New York Jets’ quarterback of the future.
He wasn’t when he made his first start for Gang Green and blew away the Cincinnati Bengals. He wasn’t in his second start against the Indianapolis Colts before getting injured.
And he isn’t, for sure now, after throwing four interceptions in the Jets’ 45-17 embarrassing loss to the Buffalo Bills at MetLife Stadium.
This isn’t a second-guess. It was a first guess.
White wasn’t the answer for a franchise that hasn’t won a Super Bowl since the Louisiana Purchase.
All the noise was fake, phony.
This was just desperate Jets fans hoping to speak it into existence. Shamefully, it was the coach and management praying that their ship had finally come in, too.
Somehow, they painted their situation as a QB controversy. Because of one good game, their first-round QB Zach Wilson was in limbo.
Granted, Wilson wasn’t playing well when he got injured. But to turn your back on your 22-year-old who you drafted out of Brigham Young just months ago with the second overall pick, was ludicrous.
Enter the Jets. It fits this comical organization.
And as for White, he transferred from South Florida to Western Kentucky and was a fifth-round pick of the Cowboys in 2018.
Plus, White had gotten no run in the league at all until Wilson was injured and he started in his stead.
Shame on first-year Jets coach Robert Saleh, who is just months into his first head-coaching job in the NFL. Now, he only can look crazy and desperate. You can’t be a prisoner of the moment in the NFL. It will bite you time and time again. One game doesn’t make a career. This is elementary stuff.
But, somehow, the Jets thought they’d found a diamond in the rough, a franchise quarterback who slipped through the cracks, who fooled the scouts and many personnel people.
Sure, it happens. But not that often.
The only thing worse than the Jets believing they got lucky was that White started believing all his press clippings. A few days ago, he stuck out his chest and told the world how good he was and pointed a finger at NFL front offices for missing on him.
“I couldn’t tell you. That’s definitely the scouting departments across the league and what their interpretation of me is,” he told reporters. “I have 100 percent confidence in myself.
“So if you ask me, I should have been a first overall pick. But that’s neither here nor there. That’s four years ago. I try to get my mind off that and be in the here and now and execute what my job is right now.”
No one will kill White for being confident. Most players feel that way. It’s nearly impossible to make it to this league and not think you’re something special.
But White would have better off letting his play speak for itself. You should be about it, not talk about it.
On Sunday, White simply looked like he didn’t belong in the league anymore. He did a terrible job with decision-making and taking care of the football.
It was a far cry from his debut as a starter. Two weeks ago, White threw for 405 yards and three touchdowns in an impressive victory over Cincinnati.
The Jets could have put White back in the game after he was medically cleared after a hard hit against the Bills. But Saleh benched him in favor of veteran Joe Flacco, who handled the mop-up duties.
Man, things change quickly. That’s why the NFL stands for Not For Long.
It was just a few weeks ago when Jets fans were chanting his name, “Mike White! Mike White! Mike White!” and Boomer Esiason on WFAN was asking fans to wear white to this game to have a “White Out.” Well, late in the game he got it when White was benched for Flacco.
Now, Jets fans don’t want to see him again. That’s usually what happens when you are fooled, when it’s a mirage or a charade. This is who White was all along.
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