Wannstedt has sat on the fence and hoped that someone would flat out come and take the job away from Fiedler. Not for nothing but he may have even hoped that Ray Lucas would do that...at the time Lucas was only a season removed from having led the Jets to something like a 6-2 record, getting the Jets to win games where Rick Mirer had failed...and beating the Dolphins twice in the process (in 1999, while Dave was an assistant coach to Jimmy here in Miami).
Brian Griese, he set him up as best he could to try and succeed, take the job away, and Griese never did that. Lucas didn't either. In 2001 he tried to trade a first rounder for Matt Hasselbeck. He's talked about bringing in all kinds of guys that are sort of on Jay's level that could hopefully surprise us and win the job. The thing is, he was too scared (in general, exception being the Hasselbeck case) to go out and spend money or draft picks on a guy who would definitely be our new QB. We were winning too many games with Jay at QB for him to be comfortable doing that cuz its one thing if you're in the tank and you've got nothing to lose, its another if you're fighting with all you've got to get to the Super Bowl and coming just short...you don't want to rock the boat too much you lose chemistry and bam you go from a 10-6 team to a 6-10 team overnight.
So once again, we're in that position where we've got a guy Dave hopes will just take that job away from Jay...but we paid a lot for him, and he's the best shot we've had since Jay arrived in 2000 to unseat him...so its more like what we did when we brought Jay Fiedler over here from Jacksonville, to put him in a position to beat out Damon Huard. The cards were a little stacked against Damon back then, and the cards are a little stacked against Fiedler now.
Dave doesn't necessarily want to just go with what he knows. He wants these guys to come out and beat Jay, but take a look at what we've had. He never made the gutsy personnel decision to get the guy that definitely has the talent that could beat out Jay. Lucas never beat Jay, and rightfully so. Griese never beat Jay and rightfully so. McNown never did it, and rightfully so. Heupel never showed promise, and though Rosenfels has supposedly shown some promise, there has got to be SOMETHING there that they do not like...maybe something about leadership or game management who knows. Maybe it really just IS age and pedigree...