Can I see the link to these predictions? Why do people say stuff like this. - My prediction was that KC was a WIN NOW team and a perfect and only spot for Herm because he's the only guy out there that would take a HC job while keeping the same systems in place - a guy who didn't have his own systems and was willing to just cheerlead Vermeil's team and coordinators. Most new HC's would want to come in and set things up their own way with his own "People"... Herm has no way, Herm has no people. Yeah, they had injuries... But, that was a veteran team that had recent success, a defense already in place with a DC and Larry Johnnson to hand the ball off to.... My prediction was pretty much spot on - An erractic team, older with potential injuries trying to give it one more go with a closing window.... BArely a playoff team with a Head Coach that wouldn't give them a coaching edge vs anyone. My prediction has always been that Herm won't lose a team and won't have a team go belly up on him but, he'll also never have the edge to win it all.... Hey I'll predict barely making the playoffs for Herm every year.
You guys in general... not necessarily YOU. There were plenty of people predicting a complete collapse of KC this past year. Champ was leading the charge (not that we ever expected that to change )
You are correct that Herm was impacted by retirements/injuries in his first year at KC, but the point here is that he never has a backup plan (especially one that he has conceived). Sure Pennington was able to step in for Vinny, but Chad was on the roster pre-Herm. I agree that the 2005 Jets were decimated by injuries (partly a function of relatively poor conditioning?), but he had no young studs/serviceable vets to step in and perform. Then he plays the injury card, when injuries are a function of the game and should be anticipated to a degree. Could Herm control Mawae's injury in 2005. No. Did Mangini draft a tough as nails young center in Mangold in 2006 who repeatedly got injured but missed ~2 snaps all year. Yes. I agree Mangini's 2006 season was relatively injury free at key positions, and the jury is somewhat out on his ability to recover from key injuries. That said, look at the RBBC he had in 2006 to replace Curtis. Surely Curtis would have outperformed the Barlow/Houston/Washington committee were he healthy, but Mangini had a serviceable option. And then in the 2007 offseason, they trade for a stud RB in Jones to address the problem further. The argument will be made that every year that Chad was healthy for the most part, that Herm went to the playoffs. And Mangini had a healthy Chad in 2006. Fine. But Mangini is building the backup plan for Chad by drafting Clemens. Clemens may not be the answer, we'll see. But, again, there's a plan in place. And knock on wood, but how much of Chad's health in 2006 was a function of resources devoted to improving the O-line. You win in the trenches. Maybe Herm is learning in KC with the drafting of Croyle, but why did it take into his sixth year as an HC to get it? It's a perfect example of his difficulty learning/adapting to changing circumstances on the fly.
Herm wasn't the GM here, Bradway was. Mangini isn't the GM now, Tanenbaum is. Besides, you can say the Great Parcells didn't have a plan B when Vinny went down, shit happens in football. He actually had just signed Mirer but Vinny went down in the first half of Game 1. Not vastly different from Chad going down in Game 3. The coach isn't god, he can't fix everything.
Baloney. Bradway had the spine of a jellyfish. Whatever Herm wanted (or didn't want, too often), Herm got. Just like you really think Tannenbaum is calling the shots on personnel for the Jets now? Of course he's not. He's there to check Mangini, but this is Mangini's operation. It's also Parcells who drafted Pennington, you seem to forget. I'm not asking Herm to have a crystal ball on his desk, I'm asking him to have a plan. The only plan Herm seemed to have was the one he used to flee New York. And in retrospect, I wish he had utilized planning more often because the outcome in that case was gold.
The best was his game plan for the Indy PO game run Johnson over & over again. Like he thought he was going to suprise Indy with that plan
"A veteran team that had recent success"? what recent success did they have? Missing the playoffs 2 straight years and 7 of 8? never winning playoff game?
They had a plan fr Chad's backup, they brought in a proven winner in jay Fiedler but unfortunately he got hurt and they didn't do a great job planning for life w/o Curtis last year. I think they knew early on he wasn't coming back but they went into the season w/a 4th rd pick and 2 guys who barely played the year before then they overpaid for a serviceable 1 year back. They did a great job getting Jones this offseason but luckily for them Chad was healthy and was able to overcome the lack of running game. Why would Herm/Tb have drafted another QB in the first 2 rds? The earliest they would have done that was 2006 and they weren't around for 2006. They signed him to a an extension in '04 then he got hurt but was supposed to be ready for '05 so why would they have drafted a QB so early? In KC he saw he had an old QB and the drafted one in rd 2.
He should have drafted a QB in April 2005, after two consecutive injury-plagued seasons from Pennington. But he chose to go the route of Fiedler, a "winner" who apparently Herm never really had confidence in exhibited by his unwillingness to let Fiedler take the reigns to begin the '05 season as Chad continued his rehab. Herm was too close to Chad, rushed him back and then left him vulnerable to reinjury. I concede that Herm finally got it in KC, but, again, it was six years after he was in the HC role.
What would drafting a QB have done? The guy wouldn't have played, that was a veteran team that just went to the 2nd round and was eyeballing the Super Bowl. They brought in a playoff experienced guy in the event Chad went down. There's no way to plan for your top two QBs going down for the year in the same half. Hindsight is 20/20.
They were 2 fluky injuries and by all accoutns Chad was going to be ready for 2005 so why draft a QB high? They did draft a backup in 2003. I don't thin that Herm didn't have onfidence in Jay, I think he had a ton of confidence in Chad. Chad was cleared to play and did't look bad in preseason and before he got hurt the 2nd time we were 1-1 and even after he got hurt against jax he led us to the potential GW TD that Chrebet dropped.
I gotta agree with junc on this one. Who would have thought you would lose your starter and backup QB in the same game. It's hard to prepare for something like that.
Your statement that "by all accounts Chad was going to be ready" is not accurate. Certainly by all of Herm's accounts, he was going to be ready. But then consider the source. We were all hoping he would come back as soon as possible, but was that really in his best interest? In retrospect, it wasn't. And to Italian Seafood, the point isn't that a newly-drafted QB would be able to step in immediately. It's that sometimes you have to start planning for things down the road, and not just the present. Why wouldn't you draft another QB at that point? Why not have a plan in place in case Chad got hurt for the third season in a row (which he did). Why wait until you have no other option for a quarterback and reach for one? Andy Reid's not popular in Donovan McNabb's house right now, but he's thinking about the future.
Again, I'm not saying that Herm should have anticipated Fiedler's injury. Obviously not. But he put an awful lot of eggs in the Chad basket for three straight seasons, and a a couple of the eggs got broken. But what about the OL position in 2005. By the end of the year, the team is playing with the cast of characters from the meet and greet scene from Animal House. A bunch of zeros. Meanwhile, we have 16 safeties on the roster because "you can never get enough corners" according to Herm. Which if true, and it probably is, why didn't he draft corners instead of safeties, no less O-linemen. Enough of my rant.
The problem with the plan for 05 was the let the OL fall to crap and thought they were a CB and kicker away from a SB when in fact the most important thing they needed to do was protect Chad like their lives depended on it. They failed to address the real problem with the team and tried to blame the lost SB on the kicker and the crappy CB play. Failing to adequately protect Chad coming off a tough injury was not only stupid it was negligent. Bradway and Herm both deserved to be fired for that alone.
Well, as far as the OL goes, Curtis was coming off of a pretty good 2004 season. We all know Herm loves to keep handing the ball off so he probably figured they could duplicate that feat. The main problem was not in building up the OL in 2005, but ignoring it for the most part in the years leading up to that. You can never have too many corners? You also can't have too many OL either IMO. Once the injuries to the OL kept piling up, there just weren't suitable replacements because the depth was shit.
I have not posted here in a long time, but thought I'd check in with this thread. I think Herm was on his way to being thought of very highly down the road when thinking back on Jets historically. The manner in which he left the team ruined any chance of me thinking he was anything but a total BS artist. He worked his own future harder than the team's, and that goes against everything he supposedly stood for. I was one of the last to abandon Herm, but in retrospect I may have been chumped.
he was progressing well and he had a good preseason. He was cleared to play by the Dr's and he showed he could play in preseason. the rason he stunk in week 1 wasn't b/c of his shoulder, it was b/c he couldn't hold onto the football. he won game 2 for us w/ his arm and even after reinjuring his shoulder in week 3 if Chrebet catches that potential TD we win that game. They had a plan, they drafted Brooks to be a longterm backup, they signed Quincy then they signed Jay. You aren't drafting a QB in the 1st or 2nd rd a few months after signing your QB to franchise QB money. That crap Ol had the league's leading rusher in 2004 and they had spent picks on OL and one of them started in '05 and was our best OL in 2005. Mawae could still play, he wasn't released last year b/c of $ or b/c he couldn't play. he was released b/c he was a leader under the previous regime and they wanted a fresh start w/ the new staff.
Mawae was cut because he was a lockerroom politician who had a penchant for airing dirty laundry in the press. I loved the guy as a player, but after the shit he pulled on Groh, I was less than impressed with his leadership abilities.
