Hey Colt Brennan! Your Nice Warm Glass of SHUT THE HELL UP is Ready

One thing Joe Gibbs never did as a coach was allow his intentions or back-up plans leak to the public. Especially not through quarterbacks. Which is why it's sort of unnerving to hear these words come from Colt Brennan's mouth. Per PFT (transcribing a radio interview):

"I gotta step in this year. They've already made it clear that they're going to play me a ton in the pre-season and we gotta play four very talented teams and talented defenses and that's going to be my test.

"Right now it seems like it's in everyone's hands. For Jason Campbell it's his last year, it's in his hands to go out and earn that second contract and earn that for him. And for me in the preseason it's my chance to go out there for the second year and prove that I belong and have a great preseason and show that I belong and maybe could be a starter one day."

At cursory glance, no real surprises here. A recently drafted QB should get a chance to play in preseason games. Brennan is still an unknown commodity and what if, god forbid, Campbell and Collins go down?

Colt Brennan destroying 6th-stringers in 2008 preseason. Image via MonkeyinmyMind.

On the other hand, Colt, shut the hell up. This is not the time, nor the team, nor the QB situation, to say anything other than: "Jason Campbell is the starter. I suckle at his teet of awesome. I'm preparing to be the best back-up/third stringer I can be. Do not go out and buy my jersey."

There's a time and a place for QB swagger. I'm glad to see Colt's still got it - lord knows you need it to suceed in The League. I just don't think that time is now. Look Colt: your #1 QB has an 800 pound gorilla of expectations on his back, is playing for his career, and is coming off of an off-season in which his owner and GM went and stabbed him in the back. Twice. His coach has hardly given him ringing endrosements and - et tu, Brute? - met with Sexy Mark Sanchez in a pre-draft dinner with Snyder & Co. You've got a modest following fans just clamoring to get rid of Campbell and have you start, so you know anything you say will cause a stir. What are you doing?

Now you've got idiots like PFT's Mike Florio speculating that you're in the plans for the regular season, that Zorn is so afraid of Snyder's wrath that he'll try to appease Snyder by irrationally benching Campbell at an inopportune time. Say, midseason. And how can you fault such speculation? Snyder has proven his taste for meddling with personnel, and spent this whole offseason undermining Campbell. Is it a stretch to take a harmless quote from the young QB waiting in the wings and run with it? This is the sort of thing Gibbs worked hard to avoid. Your starting QB just doesn't need more noise out there about his job than he's already dealing with.

And hey, maybe it's all true. Maybe the coaches are whispering to Colt that they expect him to be the starter by Week 8. But that shit needs to remain in house right now. I'm glad to see Brennan has ambitions - I'd be worried if he didn't. But sometimes you just shut your trap and support your teammates. If there's a time to do that it's now, and if there's a player who needs the support desperately, it's Jason Campbell.