They need more than Band-Aid
Herm Edwards, outgoing coach of the Jets, the one who thinks you get a raise and more job security after 4-12, kept saying to the end that this was just one bad season. He didn't mean it, the way he didn't mean it when he said he wanted to stay. If Edwards really believe that, where's he going?
It is not just one season, not the way things are going with the Jets. They are a disaster waiting to happen now because there is no one in the house with the talent or nerve or vision to fix this mess. This is how you turn into the Detroit Lions. You look at this and think about what happened to the Knicks after Jeff Van Gundy walked.
If the people running the Jets, and these are people who can run this team right into the ground, think that acting fast to replace Edwards, trying to look decisive to their fans, is the way to go here, they are bigger fools than those fans already think they are.
Jim Haslett is not the answer here. There is no immediate answer. There is no 24-second clock on them once Edwards is gone to Kansas City, where the genius running the Chiefs, Carl Peterson, thinks he knows something about Edwards that the rest of the world doesn't as he prepares to double Edwards' money.
The Jets have far bigger concerns than just replacing Edwards right now. They need to take a look at their entire operation, from GM Terry Bradway on down.
Maybe what the Jets really need is help from the outside, the way Wellington Mara did back in 1979 when Pete Rozelle, then the NFL commissioner, effectively hired George Young to be the Giants' general manager. Wellington Mara, despite the way things went terribly wrong for the Giants in the '60s and '70s, knew a lot about the league and about football, and had more of a hand than people knew shaping the glamorous Giant teams of the '50s. Woody Johnson, the Jets' owner, has no such background, no such history with the league.
And no coach. Again.
I don't know if Paul Tagliabue has the chops to help the Jets here, since it is Tagliabue who contributed mightily to the current mess in Cleveland by suggesting that John Collins was the man to straighten out that mess. But there isn't a Jets fan out there who thinks that Johnson and Bradway and team president Jay Cross and assistant GM Mike Tannenbaum, who managed the salary cap for Bill Parcells, are the people to get the Jets out of their own mess.
After all these years on the job, Johnson in particular looks like a preppier version of James Dolan. Cross? The great team president in charge of West Side stadiums? His qualification for getting the right people to run this football operation is that he got the Miami Heat a new arena. The fact that he actually is president of the Jets really does make you believe that football stadms are more important to Johnson that football teams.
That leaves us with the general manager who seems more and more bewildered by his situation, and by the city in which he works.
"I'm not even sure how much Terry wants to be there anymore," one NFL general manager from the Midwest said yesterday.
The Jets had a nice run with Bradway and Edwards running things, making modest improvements on a core of players that Parcells made. You don't have to like Parcells or the way he left the Jets and came back to coach the Cowboys later to admit that. But we are seeing right now, one year after the Jets were giving the Steelers all they wanted in Pittsburgh, how fast things can get sideways in the modern NFL. You can make a big move to the top of the standings. Or you can fall fast, and hard.
Somebody with real knowledge of the league and no personal agenda has to get Woody Johnson's ear, and get it fast. Maybe somebody like Ron Wolf, who worked for the Jets once and then built a Super Bowl champ around Brett Favre in Green Bay.
Because is there a Jets fan out there who trusts the current Crack Football Committee to keep the Jets from turning into the Lions? And why are the Lions where they are? Because their owner has had the wrong guy - Matt Millen - in charge much too long.
The Jets need a Rod Thorn, who now runs the Nets. There was no bigger joke franchise in sports, not even the L.A. Clippers, than the Nets when Thorn left the NBA office to come run the team. Then he made the Jason Kidd trade and before you knew it, the Nets were playing in two straight NBA Finals. And maybe they were on their way to a third until they ran into Larry Brown's Pistons.
Everything that happened started with having the right man in charge. You can make a pretty good case that Caring Bruce Ratner - who would be the basketball version of Woody Johnson without Thorn as his wing man - doesn't even think about buying the Nets or making his real estate grab in Brooklyn if Thorn didn't make them something of value.
The Jets need somebody like that. Somebody like George Young. The trick is finding him. When Johnson got the Jets, the end of his front-office star search was Terry Bradway. Maybe it is time to rethink that before Bradway gets to hire another Jets coach. I keep hearing we need continuity around the Jets at a time like this.
Why?
source : nydailynews.com
It is not just one season, not the way things are going with the Jets. They are a disaster waiting to happen now because there is no one in the house with the talent or nerve or vision to fix this mess. This is how you turn into the Detroit Lions. You look at this and think about what happened to the Knicks after Jeff Van Gundy walked.
If the people running the Jets, and these are people who can run this team right into the ground, think that acting fast to replace Edwards, trying to look decisive to their fans, is the way to go here, they are bigger fools than those fans already think they are.
Jim Haslett is not the answer here. There is no immediate answer. There is no 24-second clock on them once Edwards is gone to Kansas City, where the genius running the Chiefs, Carl Peterson, thinks he knows something about Edwards that the rest of the world doesn't as he prepares to double Edwards' money.
The Jets have far bigger concerns than just replacing Edwards right now. They need to take a look at their entire operation, from GM Terry Bradway on down.
Maybe what the Jets really need is help from the outside, the way Wellington Mara did back in 1979 when Pete Rozelle, then the NFL commissioner, effectively hired George Young to be the Giants' general manager. Wellington Mara, despite the way things went terribly wrong for the Giants in the '60s and '70s, knew a lot about the league and about football, and had more of a hand than people knew shaping the glamorous Giant teams of the '50s. Woody Johnson, the Jets' owner, has no such background, no such history with the league.
And no coach. Again.
I don't know if Paul Tagliabue has the chops to help the Jets here, since it is Tagliabue who contributed mightily to the current mess in Cleveland by suggesting that John Collins was the man to straighten out that mess. But there isn't a Jets fan out there who thinks that Johnson and Bradway and team president Jay Cross and assistant GM Mike Tannenbaum, who managed the salary cap for Bill Parcells, are the people to get the Jets out of their own mess.
After all these years on the job, Johnson in particular looks like a preppier version of James Dolan. Cross? The great team president in charge of West Side stadiums? His qualification for getting the right people to run this football operation is that he got the Miami Heat a new arena. The fact that he actually is president of the Jets really does make you believe that football stadms are more important to Johnson that football teams.
That leaves us with the general manager who seems more and more bewildered by his situation, and by the city in which he works.
"I'm not even sure how much Terry wants to be there anymore," one NFL general manager from the Midwest said yesterday.
The Jets had a nice run with Bradway and Edwards running things, making modest improvements on a core of players that Parcells made. You don't have to like Parcells or the way he left the Jets and came back to coach the Cowboys later to admit that. But we are seeing right now, one year after the Jets were giving the Steelers all they wanted in Pittsburgh, how fast things can get sideways in the modern NFL. You can make a big move to the top of the standings. Or you can fall fast, and hard.
Somebody with real knowledge of the league and no personal agenda has to get Woody Johnson's ear, and get it fast. Maybe somebody like Ron Wolf, who worked for the Jets once and then built a Super Bowl champ around Brett Favre in Green Bay.
Because is there a Jets fan out there who trusts the current Crack Football Committee to keep the Jets from turning into the Lions? And why are the Lions where they are? Because their owner has had the wrong guy - Matt Millen - in charge much too long.
The Jets need a Rod Thorn, who now runs the Nets. There was no bigger joke franchise in sports, not even the L.A. Clippers, than the Nets when Thorn left the NBA office to come run the team. Then he made the Jason Kidd trade and before you knew it, the Nets were playing in two straight NBA Finals. And maybe they were on their way to a third until they ran into Larry Brown's Pistons.
Everything that happened started with having the right man in charge. You can make a pretty good case that Caring Bruce Ratner - who would be the basketball version of Woody Johnson without Thorn as his wing man - doesn't even think about buying the Nets or making his real estate grab in Brooklyn if Thorn didn't make them something of value.
The Jets need somebody like that. Somebody like George Young. The trick is finding him. When Johnson got the Jets, the end of his front-office star search was Terry Bradway. Maybe it is time to rethink that before Bradway gets to hire another Jets coach. I keep hearing we need continuity around the Jets at a time like this.
Why?
source : nydailynews.com
No comments:
Post a Comment