I don't think Geno was ready to play this year so on top of liking Mark and being confident we'd win w/ him he also could have helped groom geno in the event mark had another poor season(which I don't think would have happened) but Idzik wanted Geno to start week 1 and he had the power.
I am always willing to give everyone a chance but right now I am not happy w/ Idzik's moves outside of Richardson and a few low priced pick ups.
I think he been awful.. all he's done is get rid of anyone who made money. Tanny draft picks are playing great. Richardson was a good pick. But coaching staff has allot more influence in picks than lead to believe. I don't think idzik has done anything but dump salary and get credit for tannys picks and Rex defense coaching. Let's not start that thread here.
Or maybe Marino actually would have WON Super Bowls here with a defense/running game (at the time) better than he ever had in Miami. I still prefer Pennington to O'Brien personally. O'Brien did have more physical talent but only was a top-notch QB for his first three years or so before he got beaten up.
lol with the new rules he would be scoring 27 points a game on his passing alone, he might be leading the division with him at the helm. Great guy, great Jet. He is missed.
People are forgetting how flat the NFL curve is today. During Kenny O'Brien's the gap between good and poor teams was WAY more pronounced. Consequently, a team scraping into the playoffs was almost surely at a real disadvantage to the better teams. Moreover, there were five playoff spots, not six (granted, a few less teams as well). So when you say that Kenny O'Brien never won a playoff game* remember that the competition was stiffer to just get into the playoffs AND the teams that made it were generally better on average. This doesn't even touch on Walton, the OL, play calling, etc. IMHO, O'Brien was a very good QB. Was he immobile? Yep, he was. So was Marino and no one would call him crap. OTOH, he didn't win any SBs either. Fact is immobility at the QB position was the norm back then. * a few peeps have said this but I could've sworn he won one. I need to look that up....
And the fact you think Testaverde is the best in franchise history is an embarrassment to the rest of us.
Fair points but yeah O'Brien never won a playoff game. Lost in the first round to the Pats at home in '85. Pat Ryan won the WC game in '86 and then got hurt/O'Brien lost the Cleveland game the next week. Lost to Houston whatever year that was when Coslet got in the playoffs at 8-8.
No doubt Kenny O was better but what did that get us? Growing up in those days, I used to be satisfied having a prolific O with a lot of weapons and not making or winning playoff games didn't really bother. Now that I'm older and wiser, I really could care less. I would take winning games 3-0 all the way to the Super Bowl.
Lol I hear you. The jets were exciting back then at times. Either god awful, or heart breakingly disappointing. I can't say I miss those times. Despite not wining a Super Bowl . Being a jet fan post parcells is heaven compared to what it was pre parcells. Lol
Those were my formative years, I could have gone either way. The Giants were dominant defensively, but 3 yards and a cloud of dust on offense. I liked the Jets because they were exciting to watch offensively. Like the child I was, I got distracted by the shiny objects while the Giants were winning Super Bowls.
Kenny O'Brien played behind the worst offensive line in the league his entire career. Mark Sanchez played behind a Top 5 NFL offensive line his entire career. Anybody comparing Sanchez favorably to O'Brien is an idiot. Kenny was a terrific QB.
IF O'Brien had come out of college a few years earlier perhaps he would have led us to victory over Miami in the Mud Bowl. When he was in his prime much of the team had aged too much to stay healthy whenever we tried to make a playoff run. The year we started 10-1 we lost damn near everyone to injury.
Todd was good but he was no O'Brien. I think what many posters are missing in their comparisons are what Bill Parcells did to transform this franchise to bring back the respectability we have not had since SB III. Since he has been here we have had superior coaches and free agents that we could not have wished for previously. The other difference is that the NFL's hard salary cap has increased parity in the league allowing us a better chance to fairly compete with teams like the 49ers and Giants that dominated in the 80s. Also, tons of rules to protect the QB and defenseless receivers have opened up the passing game in a way that O'Brien could not have imagined. If the Shootout between O'Brien and Marino happened this year each team would have topped 75 points. A lot of young guys seem to think that Pennington, Sanchez, or even Testaverde's post season success make them superior (or almost as good as) Robinson, Todd, or O'Brien. Not only did the coaching vastly improve but these later QBs played behind a wall of freakish offensive line talent like Kevin Mawae, Nick Mangold, Jumbo Elliot, Jason Fabini, Brandon Moore, Alan Faneca, Damian Woody, D'Brickshaw Fergeson, etc. and had a HOF running back in Curtis Martin (Thomas Jones and LaDanian Tomlinson didn't suck either) to keep the defense honest. For the same reason people seem to forget just how good Wesley Walker and Al Toon were. Watch those O'Brien highlights again and you will repeatedly see Walker wide open. Hearing kids say Cherbet could hang with those two just makes my ears hurt.
We would have easily cleaned up the cap w/ Tannenbaum too. It was set up for a quick fix. he had more talent around him in a much weaker era and couldn't even win a single playoff game. he took over a team that was young and in the title game and couldn't win a playoff game. 1983-1989: had a 1 in 5 chance to win division, 20%. Had a 2 in 11 chance to earn wild card, 18% and could get WC home game(which we did in '85 and lost w/ Kenny and won in '86 w/ Ryan) 1990-1992: had a 1 in 5 chance to win division, 20%. had a 3 in 11 chance to earn WC, 27%- so easy we made it at 8-8. 2009-current: had a 1 in 4 chance to win division, 25%(deceiving b/c we have NE in the division so the odds are actually much worse) and a 2 in 12 chance to earn WC, 16% and no chance of home playoff game. There aren't great teams like there were in the 80s BUT ALL of the great teams were in the NFC. NE w/ Tony Eason won 3 road games and made the SB in 1985. Non great Den teams made 3 SBs in 4 years. Walton was a pretty good offensive mind actually. Try reading, best single season in franchise history. Not best QB. We haven't had any great ones though. Wow! he won the Washington, D.C. Touchdown Club 1985 AFC Player of the year. What a prestigious award. ken AT HOME in the 1985 playoffs led us to 14 pts in a playoff loss. The lowest pt total the Jets scored in the playoffs(all on the ROAD) was 17 pts. In 2 playoff starts he threw 4 INTs w/ 2 TDs, Mark threw 3 TDs in a single playoff game and had a total of 3 in 6 playoff games- AGAIN all on the road. he can have that meaningless award. The only idiots are the ones that think we had a bad OL w/ Kenny as QB. The team aged? The team was young and up and coming when they made that playoff run. In 1985 at O'Brien's peak: Mcneil 26 hector 25 Toon 22 Walker 30 Shuler 29 OL average age 28 Gastineau 29 Klecko 32(and still an all pro) Clifton 23 Mehl 27 Dbs avg age 26 we weren't old. There wasn't FA in the 80s, we had the same chance to compete as those other teams if we drafted well which we did not. Freeman McNeil was more talented than Curtis- he just wasn't durable. In the last 30 years the best RB duo we had was Freeman and hector. The best TE we had was Shuler, probably the best WR duo was Toon/Walker, our Ols were very good in the 80s but we had a statue at QB who held the ball too long looking for big plays down the field. The problem is most just look at stats w/o context, Kenny can have his passer rating title in 1985, that means nothing w/o winning playoff games and he had the advantage of more talent around him and a MUCH, MUCH, MUCH weaker conference.
