A Week 14 Jets Rant - With a Chart!

Remember last month when the Jets beat New Orleans and were 5-4 with a bye week and the lowly 3-7 Buffalo Bills coming up next?  That was a good time.

Even though Jets fans were riding high after the New Orleans win, signs the wheels were about to come off the season actually started that week.  It was the week they put the training wheels on Geno Smith.  The Jets had some brutal games against New England, Tennessee, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati but something about them was oddly watchable.  They were throwing the ball down the field.  Since the Cincinnati game in Week 8, Geno Smith hasn't completed double digit passes in a game.  The Jets defense is pretty good but not good enough to overcome three and outs over and over again. 

I'm on record as a Mark Sanchez apologist but I was slowly getting on board with Geno Smith a little bit.  It was probably more on board with Marty Mornhinweg but either way, the Jets offense was moving the ball a little.  It was encouraging.  But when they overachieved to the point where the playoffs were a possibility they then decided that they weren't going to let Geno blow it for them.  But that's exactly what they did.  Geno can say all the right things in the media but the Jets shattered his confidence and he's now a historically bad quarterback.  He's broken and I don't want to watch him any more.  The sweet line graph below shows the decrease in first downs the Jets are getting per game.  The line indicates when Geno's training wheels were put on.

The question now becomes what do the Jets owe to their fans going forward?  We're coming up to Week 14 now and Geno Smith has started every game.  If the Jets haven't seen all they need to see from this guy, then I am very concerned.  I'm not going to say I want to see Matt Simms start or I want to see David Garrard start since none of them are the long term answer either, so I'll just say I want to see Not Geno Smith as the Jets QB.  They've thrown up three consecutive "no competes" and it's very hard to watch.  I just need to see something different.  From a franchise standpoint I get why they have to start Geno Smith but if they have to do it, can they please open up the playbook again?  If we have to keep watching this guy, then can we at least see the ball travel more than 6 yards in the air?  I can take the turnovers to an extent if we're trying to push the ball down field.  If the Jets are still evaluating Geno Smith can they at least evaluate him by letting him do something?

I know John Idzik is trying build something here but at the same time don't the fans deserve a somewhat watchable product?

The Mark Sanchez Apologist

One rule I have about sports betting is that I can't bet for or against my favorite teams.  Winning money on my team losing doesn't lessen the blow of the loss and I'm just superstitious enough to believe that maybe if I didn't bet on my favorite team to win that they wouldn't have lost.  I'm aware it's irrational, yet I still don't want to feel those feelings.

So yesterday was "big" news from Jets camp.  Although it's been unofficial for over a week, Geno Smith was officially named the starter for Week 1.  The reason I brought up the sports betting is that the Jets Win Total in Vegas right now is 6.  If I was capable of betting on this, I think the under is a pretty solid bet with Geno Smith playing.  He's not ready.  If Sanchez was starting the season I would have been more inclined to take the over.  Don't get me wrong, the Jets are not a playoff caliber team but if I'm putting a number to it, I believe Sanchez is worth at least 2-3 wins more than Geno Smith right now.

So after everything I've seen during the Mark Sanchez era, how can I justify a statement like that?  Easier than you think:

2009-2010 - These years are easy.  Two AFC Championships games and beat Tom Brady and Peyton Manning on the road in the playoffs.  Also overlooked is his 9:3 TD to INT ratio in the postseason. 

2011 - Sure he turned the ball over 22 times but it wasn't all negative.  He also accounted for 32 touchdowns (26 passing, 6 rushing).  He was only one of seven QBs to reach that amount that year.  Also take in to account that they chose Santonio Holmes over Braylon Edwards(whom Sanchez obviously had a better re pore with) after the 2010 season and replaced him with a fresh from prison Plaxico Burress.  They also let one of his favorite security blankets get away in Jerricho Cotchery and replaced him with a finished Derrick Mason.  If you watched that year you saw Plaxico and Mason weren't able to get any separation.  He was routinely throwing to covered receivers.  The Jets missed the playoffs and took a step back as a team, but Mark Sanchez actually showed me the ability to put TDs on the board.

2012 - Of course Sanchez takes a lot of blame for last year.  It was a terrible year.  But I also put a lot of it on Tony Sparano.  Brian Schottenheimer wasn't a great offensive coordinator, but at least he was an offensive coordinator.  Rex Ryan has made a lot of decisions that people question over the years, but for me the worst decision he made was bringing in Sparano to run the offense.  Week to week it looked like the team didn't even have a game plan.  I don't know if any quarterback could have succeeded in that "system" last year.

I'm not saying that Mark Sanchez's leash should have been infinite; I just really wanted to give him one more year under an actual offensive coordinator.  I'm not saying Marty Mornhinweg is some offensive wizard who could have saved Sanchez's career or anything but like Brian Schottenheimer, he's a guy who at least has a plan week to week.  If Sanchez fell on his head this year then I was fine going with Geno Smith at some point.  But as an organization it was always going to be harder to go from Geno Smith back to Mark Sanchez then it was going to be going from Mark Sanchez to Geno Smith.  So now that it is Geno Smith from Week 1, I imagine we'll never see Mark Sanchez throw another pass in a Jets uniform. 

I'm There. It's Time to Blow Up The Jets

It's that time for another Jets rant.  I was going to do this earlier but I needed some time to collect my thoughts or else this would have been more of a ramble.

So I've finally come to the point where I'm ready to blow it up.  It's a hard conclusion for me to come to because I do believe Rex Ryan will be a pretty successful head coach in the NFL.  Unfortunately if he does, his stop with the Jets will be the place he made the mistakes he will learn from.  If I'm making a pie chart...screw it I'm making a pie chart:

As you can see, I place most of the blame on Mike Tennenbaum.  I understand Rex Ryan has input on players but when it comes to putting a bad roster together, the GM is the one who needs to take the fall.  Tennenbaum loves trading up in the draft to get guys he wants (Revis, Harris, Greene, Sanchez) and it's kind of worked out (and I'm counting Sanchez as kind of working out if you go back and look at that trade*).  That's on Tennenbaum.  Rex can coach defense.  The history is there as a coordinator and in his first couple of years as a head coach.  Ideally I would still like to give him a couple of more years but someone needs to be the scapegoat for this year.  Brian Schottenheimer was the guy for last year so they can't go back to the Offensive Coordinator well again and fire Tony Sparano.  So the guy has to be Tennenbaum.  Unfortunately for Rex they need to be a package deal.  It's unfair to bring in a new GM and not let him hire a new Head Coach.  And if they made the new GM keep Rex it would only be delaying the inevitable that situation never works out.  Just cut ties and blow the thing up.

Where I fault Rex Ryan the most is actually in the hiring of Tony Sparano.  That was a miserable hire and you could see it coming from a mile away.  Just because Rex wants to run a certain type of offense doesn't mean they had the pieces to run it.

Notice on the pie chart that Mark Sanchez isn't represented.  I actually feel really bad for this guy.  He has the talent to succeed in this league.  I'm sure of it.  But the Jets broke him and they did it at every turn.  The receiving core they marched out there in 2011 was so old and incapable of getting open.  They had Santonio Holmes as a #1 when in reality he is a glorified slot receiver, Plaxico Burress who was helpful in the red zone but completely unable to get any separation between the 20s and an on his last legs Derrick Mason.  Gone was Jericho Cotchery who was his most reliable receiver and gone was Braylon Edwards who was the only guy on the team who could actually stretch the field.  Somehow he managed to throw for 26 TDs and run for 6 more.  Then forget about the Tim Tebow disaster.  I tried to talk myself in to is possibly working but every Jets fan knew that it was going to be a disaster.  Not only didn't it work from an on field aspect, the media writing about Tebow week in and week out has made this season unbearable.  I would trade this season in for the 1-15 season in a heartbeat.  

If the Jets had lost a normal game to the Patriots on Thanksgiving then I actually think this regime would be safe for next year.  There are a few legitimate excuses for a down year.  Their best defensive player (if not the best defensive player in the league) and their "best" offensive player are out for the year.  But to lose the way they lost on a football holiday on national television means heads have to roll.

As a lifelong Jets fan I would like to close out with a prediction:

At the urging of Woody Johnson Tim Tebow gets his shot.  The Jets finishing up the last five games facing teams with a combined record of 18-37 they run the table with Tebow at the helm.  The 9-7 record doesn't get them in the playoffs but it saves every one's job.  The Jets brass are convinced that Tim Tebow is their guy for 2013 completely ignoring the fact that they were playing lousy teams.  Tim Tebow being a disgusting NFL quarterback leads the Jets to a 4-12 2013 season wasting yet another year.

*Jets move from 17 to 5, give up a 2nd rounder in the same draft and send Kenyon Coleman, Abram Elam and Brett Ratliff to Cleveland.  Look at what Washington gave up for RGIII this year (two future 1st round picks and a 2nd rounder in this past draft. And that was only to move up 4 spots).  The Jets gave up essentially nothing to get Sanchez.  The worst thing a Jets fan can do is wonder how the draft would have shaken out if that trade never happened.  The Browns traded the 17th pick that was the Jets pick to Tampa to select Josh Freeman.  Cleveland flubbed the 2nd round pick they got from the Jets (David Veikune) but the player who went with the pick right after was LeSean McCoy.  I'm not super high on Freeman but the offense does seem like it would be in better hands with Freeman and a do-it-all back like Shady McCoy doesn't it?