Eli Manning went 1-6 in his first 7 starts after four years of starting at Ole Miss. He was terrible that year. Mark Sanchez is pretty terrible at the midway point of 2009 also, only the Jets are still thinking Super Bowl or bust because of the PSL competition and probably because Woody Johnson just hates being second in NY to the Giants. Who can blame him for that? So instead of doing everything they can to develop their young QB, a process that will likely be complicated by his lack of experience anyway, they dumb everything way down and essentially shut down the passing game for the rest of the year. They improve enough in the process that when their competitors all fall over simultaneously at the end of the year they get in the playoffs. Sanchez recognizes that he is the problem at this point and does whatever he can to help the team, albeit not in a major role, and the Jets make a fine run to the AFC Championship Game with all the vets playing as hard as they've ever played for anybody - because that's what Rex has created for them at that point. Sanchez notably makes very few mistakes along the way and actually makes a few very good plays and when all is said and done nobody can say Mark Sanchez is the reason the Jets didn't go to the Super Bowl that year, although that is very possibly the case. Gotta note at this point that it would have been a major upset if a 1998 Vinny Testaverde had gone into Peyton Manning's house and beaten him in the AFC Championship Game. But Mark Sanchez clearly wasn't going to do that. So the Jets get good vibes at the end of 2009. They took Sanchez lemons and turned it into Rex's lemonade. Enter 2010 and the Jets add another piece on offense with Santonio Holmes to go opposite Braylon Edwards. They lose the ground and pound though when Alan Faneca is let go. Kris Jenkins is gone early on and for good this time. The late and post-prime vets that the Jets added in 2008 are now half gone. The talent on the team is aging fast with the exception of Revis, Mangold, Harris and D'Brick. The roster is beginning to thin out. 2010 is basically 2009 revisited with the exception that Sanchez is no longer a raw rookie. He has cut his mistakes down and he's carried over the clutch play from the 2009 playoffs and basically he's not costing the Jets wins left and right like he was in 2009. We look at 2010 and we see 11-5. It could just as easily have been 8-8 or 9-7 again. The Jets improbably won several games during the season in which they scored very quickly at the end of the game in situations where even great QB's have trouble getting the job done. They won one game where the defense gave up a lead with under a minute to go in the game and the offense marched right down the field and won it for them after that. That doesn't happen very often. Anyway, the main point is that the Jets probably weren't as good as they looked in 2010 but they had a resiliency, again probably attributable to Rex more than anything else, that allowed them to keep the smoke and mirrors going although the talent was really thinning by that point. Then you get to 2011 and the lockout and everything went bad for the Jets in terms of talent. They lost another of the 2008 free agents when Damien Woody was cut and subsequently retired. They lost a key piece on the offense when they chose not to re-sign Braylon Edwards. They signed a high profile free agent in Plaxico Burress who proved unable to hold up his end outside the red zone. Their draft picks of previous seasons failed to add significant value to the roster, in some cases because of the lack of OTA's and in others because they were busts. The talent level on the 2011 squad was lower as a result of vets aging and draft picks failing than any roster since 2007. The Jets had a career backup at swing tackle who started the entire season at RT. They had an average to below-average left guard who played with multiple injuries for much of the season. Their All-Pro Center got hurt early on and there was nobody to replace him for the games he was out. The wide receivers not only had less talent than the 2010 group but they also had trouble with the Jets offense and so we had the spectacle of multiple collisions during the season with Jets WR's and TE's running into each other and causing broken plays. On the defensive side of the ball one of the LB's was aging rapidly and another one tore his achilles tendon. The safeties were a mess all season and then the better of the two got hurt late again, causing the defense to again collapse. The defense went from excellent to very good to just good in a hurry and that wasn't enough to carry the team. The Jets collapsed at the end of the year with Sanchez surrounded by inadequate protection and an invisible corps of receivers and finally just collapsing himself. The interceptions at the end were just pitiful. They looked like David Carr redux. If you look at the 2009 Jets and you look at the 2011 Jets it's pretty clear what happened. The 2009 Jets were a strong veteran team held back by a raw rookie at QB. The 2011 Jets had a clearly developing QB held back by weak talent at key positions all around him. Rex Ryan's motivational techniques had worn thin by 2011. You can argue that they were gone by the AFC Championship Game in 2010 when the Jets lost because they came out flat on both sides of the ball. In a nutshell the Jets window for a Super Bowl never fully materialized because of timing and because the FO never had a coherent plan for building a great team. They had a coherent plan for trying to sell PSL's.
yes...2 series of a preseason game with no gameplanning in the beginning of a system install certainly confirms it. every time i read posts like this i literally want to punch my computer screen.
and every time I see the words "time to jell" or "vanilla" I want to punch mine. The Jets personnel on offsense is horrific. Im sorry this annoys you. But its just football...
One bad starter = horrific? Sanchez - Franchise quarterback who still has plenty of room to grow. Greene - Underrated runner who runs well but can't make something out of nothing when hit behind the line. Holmes - Super Bowl MVP and an asshole... need I say more? Hill - The guy to replace Edwards... lots of talent... hopefully it translates sooner rather than later. Keller - Highly overrated but still a starter on most teams. Mangold - Best C in football. Ferguson - Inconsistent but dominant when on. Moore - One of the best pass blockers in the NFL, great value starter considering how low his salary is. Slauson - Value player, hold the fort guy, some minor upside. Hunter - Bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh. Not quite "horrific". Growing pains sounds more like it.
Alternate view of our offensive talent: Sanchez - Oft-beleaguered QB running for his life. Greene - Soft RB who is always one shot to the ribs away from leaving the game. Holmes - Front-running party guy who disappears when things get tough. Hill - Raw rookie doing the "who? what? where?" most of the season. Keller - Solid receiver who can't block and disappears when he is accounted for. Mangold - Best C in football who is one hit away from recurring back problems. Ferguson - Most over-rated LT in the NFL at this point but solid when the LG is solid next to him. Moore - 31. Slauson - Good backup offensive lineman who is a mediocre starter when healthy but bad when not. Hunter - Ok, I can't really get more real than bleeeeeeeeh other than to note that I might have used blech! instead. And yeah there's some real hyperbole in the list above but all based off of grains of truth.
You could find similar grains of truth for just about every player in the entire NFL. Injury is a reality in the NFL. This isn't exclusive to the Jets. You can't base an assessment of impending failure on it.
there are more players on the team than sanchez and tebow the following offensive players are relatively young and are being afforded the opportunity to show what they can do with more seasoning and opportunities: greene, mcknight, powell, conner, cumberland, kerley, hill, ducasse, slauson, schlauderaff ... and im sure i missed one or two
He actually missed 1.5 games in 2009, and only played 3 snaps in the final Bills game in 2010, a game that would have had a pretty big impact on his stats, since we were able to dominate them with Brunell and Clemons at QB. He does have a slight advantage in that dept, but he has missed games and also played while injured at a few points.
so you are saying that a preseason week 1 game with zero game planning is something other than vanilla? Please elaborate. Are you also suggesting that within that first game with a first year offensive new install and missing 2 WR's that you expected the Jets were going to have great success running basic high school plays? BTW, these questions are not rhetorical I really would like to see your response. We seem to have a fundamental difference in opinion of what the preseason is for. Apparently, you view it as a time to evaluate the flow of your unit in 2 series with no gameplanning and players out. I view it as a time to evaluate individual players. If this be the case then damn Buffalo is screwed. They ran it 17 straight times. I guess they are going ground and pound this year huh? Guess what, they did that to EVALUATE. That's the point of the preseason. Evaluate positions and players not put together a monster performance. It does annoy me because under your expectations and saying "that's just football" shows me you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about and the whining of those with your view also have no idea what they are seeing or understand what they are looking at.
You are right and what you have described is what every team goes through at some point in this salary cap age. Granted the Jets haven't drafted as well as say the Steelers, Packers or Patriots but their drafts have been pretty decent. You can't fix everything at once and you have to rebuild different units on the fly. Both the offense and defense are in transition - more so the offense - expect the Jets to draft OL, an OLB (pretty high) and a couple of skill players particulary RB next year. I assumed this would be a two year project after the mess at the end of last year anyway.....
I think the team Tanny handed Rex in 2010 was pretty damn solid, its not like Rex hasnt had anything to work with.
All I have to say is, " a lot of folks are going to be eating crow by mid-season" ! As a almost 50 year fan, I of all people would be have to be considered a "darksider" , yet I really have a good feeling about this year. Are we going to the Super Bowl, doubt it highly. Are we going to be as bad as most of the "experts" say we are,,,,,doubt it highly.. I expect by game 8 the Jets will be somewhere around 5-3 or 6-2 with all the experts back peddling about how the Jets are playing above there talent or how certain players developed more quickly then they foresaw or other Bull crap to cover there don know crap asses.. Yet I could be totally wrong and we do suck so bad by mid season we are 2-6 in which case all the hard core darksiders can gloat. They can thrill at another wasted season and the prospect of starting completely over with a new GM/ Coach, who BTW will go on to win many SB's with the next team he takes over... At that point I will galdly come here and enjoy a large plate crow myself. I would urge all of you no matter which side of this argument you are on, to at least wait till the regular season starts before you bury this team or put them in the playoffs.
that's what she said? seriously though, it was an inevitable result of average-at-best drafting, signing overpriced players, and trying to circumvent the salary cap by deferring/guaranteeing money.
haha sorry man it was early in the morning. I'm coming off as a chicken little the sky is falling guy on here when it's not really the case. I feel like this team can be good but if they aren't it's because of the offseason. But anyway here's to a good season!
Dude, this is just a message board. Nothing said here has that effect. Oh, you really mean don't TALK (or write) and say those things! Uh, why not? See my first sentence. It's just people expressing opinions about how they see the future. Nothing more or less than that.
