I've been saying this for years, that the Jets need to junk their "Defense wins championships" philosophy, because that hasn't been successful in the modern NFL for years. But the Jets keep hiring defensive minded HCs and believing that they build a winning team. This past season should explode that myth. They had a Top 5 defense and the worst offense and that produced yet another losing season. We can discuss ad nauseum how losing Rodgers doomed them, or how Zach was the reason, or the poor OL, or even how we have the wrong coaches and GM, but the REAL problem is that we don't have a cohesive, winning blueprint to build upon that drives all those other aspects: GM, coaching, players, and which coaches and players fit this philosophy. I thought Douglas was going to be the GM who finally understood this and would install such a philosophy, but he hasn't. IDK why, whether it's because he really didn't have a good plan, or because of interference from the Johnsons, or maybe both, but it's clear now that Douglas doesn't have the answer. So who does? For those of you who have a subscription to The Athletic (If you have a paid subscription to the NY Times you get this for free but you have to sign up for it), there's a good article in today's issue about how the 49'ers turned to a Stanford professor, Burke Robinson, helped John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan rebuild the 49'ers from a losing team into a perennial winner almost overnight. https://theathletic.com/5187976/2024/01/17/49ers-john-lynch-kyle-shanahan-burke-robinson-stanford/ The article is too long to paste here, but I'll include a couple of key points. First, he advised them that they needed a clear vision of what they wanted to achieve and how they plan to achieve it. Specifically: what is their team philosophy? All successful teams have one. Teams that don't aren't successful. Another way of putting this is team identity. When people think of the Steelers, or the Packers, or the Patriots, etc. they have an image of what those teams are always like. What type of football do you want to play? Ground & Pound, aerial circus, something in between? Whatever it is, you have to identify it and then hire the right GM, CS, and scouting people to implement it, and then make sure you acquire players who fit it - no exceptions, no compromise on this aspect. Lynch and Shanahan brought in the rest of the team management and they worked on defining this, and this drove the type of personnel they would look to acquire: And this became their blueprint. All decisions on personnel are subjected to this test. Moreover, it's not static, it can be changed over time as they further refine what they're looking for. This might mean they select players who might not be the NFL-consensus BPA but who fit their blueprint the best. It also means that they are committed to hiring coaches and installing systems/schemes that maximize the best of these players, and not try to make players fit some system they aren't a good fit for. If the GM/scouts/CS have done a good job in identifying players who fit their "Team Vision", then it's imperative that the offensive and defensive schemes fit these types of players and their skill sets. Ironically, Saleh comes from this organization, and I believe I see elements of his coaching style that are rooted in this philosophy. The problem is that he doesn't have an understanding of offense, and two, that Joe Douglas doesn't share the 49'er approach so there's a disconnect. Sorry for the really long post. I'll sum it up here by saying, either Douglas, Saleh, et. al. have to get on the same page and adopt some version of the "49'er Way", or they need to be replaced by a GM and HC who can. Otherwise we're doomed to continue to fail.
I've been listening to Dolphins, Eagles and Cowboys podcasts. They are really funny. 10+ win teams that are poorly coached, have bad QB's and need to fire them all. Of course, winning and losing can be solved if the teams only listened to them. The whole idea that coaches are able to orchestrate every play and are to blame when a player makes a mistake. Actually, players have bad days. In football mostly they are not 100% healthy at this time of the season. Enjoy the off-season.
Thanks for the write up CC. I am a NY Times subscriber but didn't know I could get Athletic for free. I took care of that. Now, the problem with Jets isn't only philosophy. It starts with ownership. Change ownership and see what happens. Look at Eagles and Cowboys for example. Cowboys have meddling owner like Jets. Look at their results. Even though they ended up with 2 good QB's in Romo and Dak back to back they failed to win a play off game. Look at the Eagles. The owner knows who to hire. They went to Superbowl with 2 different Head Coach/QB combo within 10 years. It isn't the coaches or QB. it is the team owner. That's why Woody has to go.
Yes, agreed. But failing Woody giving up his cash cow, at a minimum he needs to hire a Pres./VP of Football Ops and turn the whole thing over to him.
You are right. Until he realizes that he is an idiot, he should hire somebody respected to be the VP of Football Ops and be done with it.
Great points and it all goes back to Bill Walsh. He put his stamp on the 49ers and long after he left they were still successful. We are in the definition of insanity mode. We keep hiring these defensive coaches when the NFL is geared toward scoring.
I think you can substitute 49's for any NFL team. Everyone is looking for those qualities, why not, they are good qualities. I don't think teams would consciously look for drug dependent, domestic abusers, reckless automobile drivers, etc. I think one quality they forgot that I would add to the list is guys who hate to lose. I think that was missing in Jet teams of the past. I think we have those guys now. All this team needs more than philosophy is a competent QB.
Yep. But even the 49'ers hit the skids for a number of years after Walsh, but to their credit they did a complete reassessment and established a new culture/philosophy. Since Werblin and Ewbank the Jets have never done this. It's that basic. Two owners who cared more about their egos and pocketbooks than winning or the fans. Hess - on his deathbed - finally relented and brought in Parcells to remake the team, but then he sold it to Woody and that ended that. A successful rebuild won't happen until the Jets redefine their philosophy. None of us should our breath.
What IS missing for unsuccessful teams is that they don't ensure that everyone fits their philosophy, no exceptions. The unsuccessful teams all talk about these same traits, but the failure - as with the Jets - is there is no follow through and insistence that everything fits their blueprint. It's clear that Douglas and Saleh aren't on the same page. Otherwise how could Douglas draft Zach and allow Saleh to hire an OC who wanted to run a system not suited to Wilson's skills? Even if Wilson was bound to fail anyway, he wasn't the only one who struggled under LaFleur. And it now seems clear that Saleh never wanted Zach in the first place. Does that sound like a team that's united around a winning philosophy? And to be clear, Douglas hired Saleh, so what was he thinking? They both have to go and the Jets need to figure out what kind of team they want and hire the people who can build it.
Saleh has to go because you can't clean out the front office and keep the coach. And it's not like he's anything special either. But he had a good plan for the offensive side of the ball, and unless you actually believe Saleh scapegoated his close personal friend, the front office shafted him so hard by firing MLF from above and forcing Hackett on him.
Please. Ordinarily I like your posts, but this one at the top, not so much. I am retired for more than 20 years, but headed up an executive development program at a HUGE company. A vision?, we did this 30 years ago. Crap then and crap now. I quote from post "What IS missing for unsuccessful teams is that they don't ensure that everyone fits their philosophy, no exceptions" What philosophy. Buzz words without descriptive anchors. Speed. Toughness, and so on. What do these even mean. another quote "Moreover, it's not static, it can be changed over time as they further refine what they're looking for" So everything is open to interpretation. All of the vision points fit into All gas, no brakes. The Jets supposedly have a vision. But without talent, this BS is meaningless. Talent cures all, disguises everything, forgives all weakness. Lack of talent exposes everything. Given a 2023 season of AR, the songs we are singing might be completely different. I will however support comments that imply having a winning culture means the team knows what kinds of players their system uses to win. If a team has an exceptionally strong linebacker group for years and years, it means they know what to look for in linebackers. And so on. but thw winning comes first, vision or not. Please tell me Purdy was a product of the vision...the last player drafted.
This is a scenario that I would have to be convinced has some basis in fact. More likely Saleh was given the choice of Wilson or Darnold and he chose the wrong one, which makes more sense to me, but I can't say for sure which is correct. And what if you get your wish? What if the new regime decides the current roster doesn't fit his vision of the qualities players should have? Are we going to clean house and start all over again like we do every three years? That would be folly because we have good players that can win. Since we seem to be on the Douglas/Saleh/Rodgers trajectory, and we don't have a choice anyway, there's no point in getting tied up in a pretzel over it. Woody said they're coming back and that's that.
If I could distill it down, most of our problems stem from an inability to embrace data and analytics. Our franchise runs on platitudes and vibes. We don't operate based on probabilities and evidence. Our antiquated philosophy and total inability to consistently do smart things stems from that. Furthermore, we're unable to even identify and copy what the other good teams do from a team building and coaching perspective. The only conclusion that can be drawn from this is that Woody truly knows absolutely nothing about football. I'd be surprised if he even watches other teams or reads about football. It's pretty much impossible to be this clueless about the sport while being around it for as long as he has otherwise.
Would it be fair to say that the jets were attempting to change the philosophy, by getting Rodgers? To have a hof qb play, and a young qb watch and learn , keep passing the torch. Of course , the hof qb went down after 4 plays, and the young qb is being run out of town.
Nah, this was a typical Hail Mary attempt by a GM and coach who felt their seats getting warmer. The Rodgers acquisition wasn't smart from the perspective of building a long-term contender. That's why I always felt lukewarm about it. It gave us a 1-2 year window to compete, but we weren't likely to compete for a Super Bowl anyway because we were not a good enough team last year to warrant going all in. We had a negative point differential last year, worse than league average (we don't embrace analytics, we take wins and losses at face value like dumb teams do). We also downgraded at OC and completely wasted a first round pick as we acquired Rodgers. Re: Wilson learning under him, again we didn't embrace analytics and data. The data says that when a QB is as bad during his first 2 season as Wilson was, there's almost no chance he's ever going to be a good QB. The smart move would've been to trade Wilson after last year to a dumb team that didn't realize that. Unfortunately, we may be the dumbest team in the league.
Yes, maybe I didn't make it clear that what I bolded is the key difference, NOT the "vision statement". The vision IS important though, it sets down in measurable terms what the team is going to look like, and then is used as the yardstick in acquiring personnel. It's this second part that the Jets have failed at. As for Purdy, I don't know much about him, or the process by which the 49'ers settled on him - as opposed to letting him become a UDFA - but I'm willing to bet the did fit their criteria.
That's a valid point Westie, but IMO the best outcome for this team if they stay the course is slightly above mediocre, certainly no SB or even a deep run in the playoffs, and then they're going to have to tear it all down again anyway. I'd like to believe that they can somehow fix the offense, but I really don't think they can with Saleh, Hackett, et. al., even if Rodgers does come back and against all odds plays a full season. This team didn't fail because of Zach Wilson, it's got major issues and if Woody think that bringing back Saleh & Co will work he's a dumb as he looks.
I think Rodgers was an attempt to salvage the position that they failed so miserably to manage in the first 3 years. Then Joe continued to do Joe things at OL. I would guess that Rodgers told him Bakhtiari was a sure thing for 2024 and they just needed a stopgap at LT. Somehow that equated to one of the worst OL situations this team has ever seen.
"Fair to say"? I don't think so; more like the owner got Rodgers because he wanted to make a splash to sell more season tickets. Of course the QB went down - the majority of NFL quarterbacks miss games every year, most don't bother doing it in the first two minutes of the season. The young quarterback never belonged in town, or any town in the NFL - he's just not equipped to play at NFL level. The philosophy appeared to be "our business plan blew up early; no sense in adapting to current circumstances - see you next year."
