Jets on right side of competent ledger
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- January
- 27
Just a quick thought as we suffer through the first weekend without football since the end of July: with all the coaching follies going on around the NFL right now, how competent do the Jets look for the way they handled Eric Mangini’s hiring last offseason.
Seriously, Norv Turner is the leading candidate for the Cowboys’ job? And Turner, or whomever is hired, is already undercut by the fact that Jason Garrett was hired as a coach-in-waiting.
Or in Miami, where defensive coordinator Dom Capers was given a big, fat contract before Cam Cameron came on board.
Or in Oakland, where anybody over the age of 33 was apparently too old for the job. Mangini’s too smart to ever want to be associated with the Raiders as they’re presently run, but, at 36, he seems like a grand old man of football with his one season of NFL head coaching experience compared to what the Raiders are throwing together.
Even Seattle created problems for itself by bringing in Jim Mora Jr., which could lead to Mike Holmgren being perceived as a lame duck in 2007.
And in Pittsburgh, where many NFL peeps believe the Steelers have hit a home run with their hire of Vikings defensive coordinator, Mike Tomlin, 34, that was still one of the more bizarre coaching searches in recent memory. Tomlin’s the coach. Uh, no he’s not, says he. Russ Grimm is the coach. Uh, upon further review, maybe not. Oh yeah, Tomlin’s the coach.
Anyway, like I said, everything that’s happened this offseason just highlights the fact that the Jets are running their organization properly. They identified a strong coaching candidate, abided by the league’s hiring practices, then acted swiftly.
Then, lo and behold, the guy actually did what he set out to do.
All of which is a huge victory considering, more often than not, the Jets’ coaching follies have led the league in weirdness.
This entry was posted
on Saturday, January 27th, 2007 at 6:01 pm by Andrew Gross.
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Jane McManus 
[...] Original post by Jets Journal and software by Elliott Back [...]
Its embarassing the way some teams are handling their business of hiring coach’s. Any guy coming into a job as a head coach should NEVER have anyone forced on him..He needs to pick his own staff, thats just commen sense to me.How do you think Rob Ryan must feel in Oakland..UGH
Well, AG, the Jets did indeed make the right hire in Mangini and he and Tannenbaum did manage to cobble together a roster and staff that got them quickly back to respectable. But the mix of players and Staff WAS an odd lot.
Neither Denny Marcin nor Tony Wise did anything of note with their respective lines, Jim Herrmann couldn’t get Vilma in position all season long, and your old pal Bob Sutton’s group as a whole couldn’t stop my Aunt Tilly from getting mega yards per game.
Some of the player acquisitions were head scratchers too, starting with practice squad stud Anthony Schlegel, Kimo Too-Old-Hoffen, Kevan Runs-only-in-the-mud Barlow, and Anthony Swinging Gate Clement.
Give all that, it was a surprisingly good season, albeit against a schedule with only one above .500 team. Looking at the upcoming season’s opponents, Em&M will have to do an even better job of assemblage, starting with some roster trimming and staff shake-ups, to match it.
Starting in the post Super Bowl week, we should see some of those changes. I think what they do between then and opening day will tell us a whole lot about how competent they really are.
And thanks for keeping the blog going. We’ve seen some good comments here from your posters and I look forward to more.
I really feel that since Parcells’s arrival, things have been pretty good off the field, Herm got us to the playoffs 3 out of 5 years, Mangini got us there in year one, we know what Parcells did and if Groh could have found one more win, the Jets make the playoffs that year. It would be really great if M and M can stay together for a number of years i.e. Cowher in Pittsburgh just to get some stability!!
As for the Ranger’s Lundquist gig, nice job, although you really seemed focused on Kevin Weekes…
[...] Andrew Gross thinks the Jets are running the organization the right way, and cites some bad examples. [...]
Johnny,
The Jets played NE twice, AND both super bowl opponents. No matter how I try to spin the math that adds up to more than one opponent with a winning record.
And they played in the second toughest division in football, and by far the tougher conferance.
Please, everyone, stop drinking the cool aid the press puts out about a weak Jets schedule.
Depending on how you rank it, it was anywhere from 7th (USA today’s Sagarin ratings) to 16th (NFL old fashioned method)in strength of schedule. In any case NOT an easy schedule.
Yes there were a few gimmes that will not be there next year, but they do not play the Bears or Colts next year either.
With expected improvement, there is not a single game on next years schedule that is not winnable.
You nailed it right on the head Wayne.
lets’s be honest wayne..there really are no easy games in this league anymore..and as far as the pats go, if grossman played half as poorly against the jets as he did vs. the pats, the jets win that game…and as far as gimmies, ask dallas how much of a gimmie the detroit game was…
OK, Wayne, I was wrong about the one opponent above .500, and we did actually play a middle of the pack schedule. But that wasn’t really my min point, was it?
Just today, it’s reported (Lange) that we’ve lost another assistant, Richie Anderson, this time to the Cardinals. While I don’t expect to hear anything about the composition of the revised staff until next week at the earliest, I still would like to see some quality people in those spots as well as new O & D line coaches.
Wise and Marcin didn’t do a very good job, even given the paucity of talent they had to work with. If, as I suspect they will, Em&M come up player additions that should improve the line play (a la the Parcelles/Belichick model), I’m not at all sure that those two can coax improved play from their respective units. Ditto for Herrmann at the LB spot.
Add to that that next year’s opponents won’t be preparing for a Jets team that was 4-12, but rather one that was a playoff unit. No one will take us lightly, as I suspect was the case in last year’s opener against the Titans, for example.
The Giants, Philly, KC, Baltimore and the Boys were all also playoff teams this past year. Throw in two games against the Pats, and on that basis alone one might be able to deduce that the schedule for next year will be tougher than last season’s. Additionally, I, at least, never consider two wins against the Bills a certainty or even a probability (we haven’t won two against them since ‘01) nor do I see gimmies in the Bengals or Titans, with a year older Young at QB. Are they all “winnable” games? Sure. But they’re all “loseable” too.
So I reiterate my position that, Kool-Aide aside, we’ll have to make big strides next season to even get back to the same 10-6 level that we wound up with this past year.
Johnny,
The point about the scheduling is that looking at next year’s schedule, there isn’t one game on there that the Jets can’t win. Will the Jets win them all? No way, not even close.
But at the start of this season, there were a handful of games most Jets fans “knew” they’d lose (i.e. Indy, Chicago, at least one New England game). The Jets surprised us by being competitive in all of those games, but still went 1-3 in them.
Now, looking at next year’s schedule, the New England games, Baltimore, Cincy, etc. are going to be tough games. And yes, next year’s schedule is tougher. But, they have a shot at every game on there.
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