Not really. He treated Yogi Berra, one of the most beloved Yankees of all-time, pretty badly. He went through that hiring and firing cycle with Billy Martin. Steinbrenner really didn't seem to have much appreciation for the Yankees legacy when he first bought the team. In time in came around, but it certainly took a good amount of years for it to happen. Johnson may be like Steinbrenner in some respects. He certainly hired a couple of guys with massive egos to run his team ...and the think about big egos is they don't take criticism well and they need a lot of massaging. Steinbrenner was like that. At times, it didn't seem like his ego could handle sharing space with Yogi and some others. I think the argument could be made that Tanny and Rex are so sure they're going to bring glory to the franchise that they don't feel any need to respect the legacy that Namath represents because they're certain they are going to replace Namath in the hearts of Jets fans.
He made the comments to further his career, it was not because he loved the Jets. If he had nothing to say, just kissed the Jets ass, ESPN would not have him back. Now he comes back with a raise and gets more hits on his web site. He made a decision, me over the Jets which is fine but he's got to live with it. He's no longer loved in Jet world including me. He's a media whore
Is his job to cover up, gloss over, and sugar coat the Jets shortcomings? Namath pointing out what is obvious to everyone else isn't self-serving; it's objective analysis.
This is why Joe is remorseful: He put the team on blast multiple times during a down year when the Jets were desperately trying to unload overpriced PSLs, and he ended up getting the same treatment from the team that Francessar got. He may have been correct with most of what he said, but bad PR is bad PR in the big money business of pro football, no matter what you've done for the franchise in the past.
Joe is a winner. He's better off not associating himself with the current collection of losers that are the New York Jets. (We lost back-to-back playoff games!!#!@$#!@$ We R gut ad fewtbawl!)
But what he said proved to be correct. And why should ESPN or anyone else pay good money for someone to come on and spout a bunch of homeristic nonsense? Any number of the homer critics of Joe here could do that. Your point about "Joe over the Jets" is also completely wrong. Criticizing the team's flaws with the hope the team improves is the mark of a true and better fan, not the pom pom waving cheerleading too many homers here wanted.
I never really understood the rationale that since Joe trashes the team he doesn't want them to win. If that's the case, a lot of people here don't want the Jets to win either. The only time I really felt he crossed the line was after Rex said he wore a Namath shirt, he cracked that he didn't know they came in that size. Clearly, he's not a Rex fan but that doesn't mean he wants the team to lose.
Bingo. As far as him 'furthering his career', fine...but it's not like he was bashing them gratuitously like Fatty, or went off the reservation and said anything totally goofy.
It's not the place of old timers to criticize the team. The Broncos went through some hard times without John Elway becoming a weekly distraction. The Dolphins have positively sucked recently and Dan Marino hasn't weighed in on all of that on a regular basis, even though he's been a commentator for a lot of that period. Joe stepped over a line this season. Not in criticizing the Jets once in a fit of passion but by repeatedly stepping in and taking slaps at the team. He's a twitter casualty and really it's his own fault. If he was smart he'd just lay low now and not stick his head up for awhile. I have a feeling that's not the agenda though. I like Joe Willie. I just don't like him becoming another loud problem facing the Jets. They have enough of those on their own right now.
I know of no rule that says former players cannot criticize the team, but the key is whether or not what is said is constructive. Saying nasty things with no purpose other than being mean and negative is not helpful and pointless. But if the criticism is constructive, why cannot it be said by a former player? I see Ray Lucas and Joe Klecko on the Jet Post Game Show after pretty much every Jet game, and they go through what they see as the positives, but also the negatives. I think we benefit by having the perspective of former players as opposed to people who never played the game (not that this is a disqualifying factor). If Joe Klecko says he thought Hunter had a bad game, and goes beyond that and says why, whether it had to do with his footwork, or who he was up against, or not getting help from anyone, or whether he was covering for Moore or the TE, I should not be able to hear Klecko's opinion because he's a former player? Who made that rule up?
Namath is not a commentator or analyst. He's not been hired to give his opinions. He doesn't have particularly good ones, which is why that's the case. I don't disagree with some of the things he said but I do disagree with the way he said them and the way he weighed in on the season on a regular basis. A former player who is working as a commentator and who only gets seen by the home town fans (and that's what Klecko and Lucas are) has some latitude to criticize the team. He's being paid to give his opinion and it's incumbent on him to do that honestly or he is shorting his employer. An all-time great on the other hand has a very different platform because everything he says gets magnified many times over what it should be and his opinion, right or wrong, gets blasted all over the landscape and becomes a rallying point for critics of the team, enemies of the team that are always poised to strike and gadflies in general. Dan Marino, during the Dolphins weakest days, was very restrained in what he had to say about the Fins fortunes. He was being paid by HBO as an analyst and he didn't shirk his duties, acknowledging that the Fins were a bad team, but he was very careful not to step over the line and become a problem for his ex-team. You'd see him kind of bow out of the back and forth when Collinsworth and company began ragging on the Fins. He understood the lines that he needed to avoid crossing. Namath on the other hand was a loud and constant distraction this year in a cacophony of voices besieging the team. His loud mouth was an enabling factor in lots of other ex-players coming forward to lay into the team also, because if Joe Namath could do it then the Jets were open targets.
Personally I never found anything Marino said about the fish to be insightful or interesting. That he chooses to essentially say nothing but plain vanilla obvious things is up to him, but whatever value he brings to his job is based entirely on his observations about every other team. Namath also used to be a commentator, on Monday Night Football. It's not like his opinions were never valued by anyone. It's beyond dispute that he was correct in his assessments of the Jets this past season. You just didn't like what he happened to be saying. The notion that Namath gave an opening to Jet players to criticize the team is quite a reach and pure speculation on your part. It's not like Holmes, for example, thought he could not say anything until Namath in effect gave him the green light. I don't even recall whether Namath's criticisms of hte team this past season preceded Holmes's. It's not like Holmes was pacing around his condo bursting to say something about Hunter, the OL and the O, but holding himself back until Namath said something. Although I appreciate that is pretty amusing to think about. Your distinction between being paid or not paid also does not make sense. Ironically some critics of Joe here speculate that he's making the comments in order to get a job. So if he got paid for his comments you'd be totally okay with them? You're all over the place on this one, I am afraid.
Again, I ask : What's with the :sad: at the end of every post? I said for him to HELP MARK SANCHEZ, not coach the team. If you had actually read my post instead of focusing on "Talk is cheap..blahblah" and posted based on that, you would've seen what I stated. My feeling is that instead of lamenting about Mark and everything, why not just get up off his sofa/couch/whatever and offer some assistance to him? Are you referring to that shot of him and Mark in "Hard Knocks"? How do you know what the situation was? What if Mark was paying attention but was focused on something else in front of him? We also don't know what Joe was talking to him about as well. Maybe it wasn't football-related. That's probably something else to consider before we throw Sanchez under the bus and run him over with it.
