| Walter A. Nesbeth III. 13th January, 2006 - 11:16 pm
 If you owned a restaurant that after a couple of years of middling success saw the manager walkout, the head cook constantly griping about his pay, and the working staff grow old right before your eyes, what would you do?
That is the scenario that the New York Jets and Woody Johnson find themselves in now. Their manager/coach Herman Edwards has left them for what he hopes are greener pastures (in both the victory and paycheck columns). Their head cook/chief pass rusher John Abraham has had contract issues squabbles with the team over the past few years and the defensive and offensive lines spent more time using Woody Johnson’s Band-Aids and other products than they did on the field.
Most restaurateurs in order to save their businesses and not only keep their current clientele, but attract newer ones, would revamp the operations of that business rather than patch it up or stand pat. Here is Woody’s chance to revamp the Jets. Philosopher Fredrich Nietzsche once proclaimed "out of chaos comes order," so let’s see if we can help the Jets get their place in order because they already have that chaos thing licked.
First of all, it looks like GM Terry Bradway is going to be around for at least another season, so let’s focus on the Head Coach position. There are two schools of thought at play, stay away from the retreads like Fassel and Martz and look to the unknown quantities or utilize the copycat approach and mirror the New England Patriots by first tapping into their stable of personnel. It appears that with the Jets interest in Eric Mangini, they are killing two birds with one contract. The funny thing is whoever is comes aboard as Head Coach; he has the potential of being here longer than the man who will sign him. As long as they can find a Head Coach that doesn’t fire the team as the past four have (see Edwards, Groh, Belichick and Parcells) , they should be OK.
Secondly, despite the hopes and dreams of the Jet faithful, there will be no “Bush in 2006”. That said, what do the Jets do with their draft pick? Do they trade down for multiple picks to address multiple needs like Running Back (even if Curtis Martin returns), Tight End, Offensive Line, Defensive Line, etc, etc… or do they take a hard look at the crop of Quarterbacks that will be available if one were to slip down to them? Pennington’s contract is restrictive to say the least, but how can anyone be sure that he will come back throwing well. It’s not like before his injuries he was making people remember receiver’s tales of the “John Elway Cross” for those foolish enough to catch a rocket Elway pass with their bodies instead of their hands. How can the Jets be so sure that there is another “Tom Brady” floating around in the lower depths of the draft or even worse, that they are astute enough to identify him if one did exist?
Third and last, for all those faithful, long-suffering (so I hear) Jets fans, “Woody, can you show a little love and get these people a stadium? C’mon!” While statistics will tell us that the Jets have a slightly better winning percentage at Giants Stadium than they did when they played at Shea, who can blame the Jets for their schizophrenic behavior over the past few 22+ years (they left Shea after 1983). If you went home everyday and on your mailbox, you kept seeing the name of another family, wouldn’t you develop a complex too? Before Hurricane Katrina, even the miserable New Orleans Saints had their own home. It’s a long shot, but wouldn’t your own home in Queens, NY where you are welcome make more sense than living in the home of a team with whom you fight for space on the back pages of the papers and in the hearts of fans? |
