At least we have solace in this one. BTW, I love how that guy waits for everyone else's reaction before he reacts. [YOUTUBE]T2O9vjuQ1RQ[/YOUTUBE]
I was an intern there in sports with Carl Cherkin, the guy who wore the suspenders. Russ Salzberg was also there, I worked with him one weekend when Cherkin went to Seattle for Seton Hall's Final Four. Matt Lauer worked there, had some cheesy mid morning show, but the star attraction was the weatherman, Lloyd Lindsay Young.
In that first video that was posted, didn't it almost look like Pete Rozelle was trying not to laugh while reading our picks?
I'll never forget: WE WANT SAPP! WE WANT SAPP! WE WANT SAPP! "The New York Jets....." WE WANT SAPP! WE WANT SAPP! WE WANT SAPP "...select tight end from Penn State..." WE WANT SAPP! WE WANT SAPP! WE WANT SAPP "...Kyle Brady" BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! (sound of chairs smashing) Were we really that dumb?
The problem with picking Lageman was not whether he was a good or bad player but wasting a 1st round pick on a guy who wold likely have still been there in the 4th round pick. How he played as a player really does not matter. The Lageman pick is one of the worst draft decisions I have ever seen a GM make. There are two aspects to evaulating a draft proper scouting and using your picks for good value. The Lageman pick was good scouting but terrible value on the pick. It was almost a certainty he would have been available to us in the 3rd round. The Lageman pick is perhaps the worst pick I have seen the jets make from a value standpoint ( Haight and Thomas are more defensible IMO) until the Schlegal and Smith picks in the 3rd round of the 2006 draft. Where Mangini took two guys in the third round that might not have even have been drafted at all. certainly neither in the first 5 rounds. Although Smith was moving up. The Schelgal pick is somewhat excusable as Mangini panicked when the Eagles took the the LB he wanted when they traded back 5 spots. But the Smith pick was also horrible. Compound that with reaching for Clemens in the second round and it was a poor job of using draft picks for value. Although that draft like the lageman draft had great scouting component just a horrible use of getting value out of draft picks. Fortunately the Jets learned their lesson in 2007 by trusting the scouting department and getting 2 very good blue chip guys in a very weak draft. I hate to agree with Kiper. But he is right Mike Hickey was a terrible GM.
interesting - i am not sure hickey was the actual GM?? i seem to remember it was a draft by committee approach in the 80's. i could be wrong cause i was a bit of a youngan at the time. i just remember espn claiming the jets were always the hardest to figure out when it came draft time.... anyway the sapp thing was interesting - i was told by a person at hofstra that there was a big disagreement on sapp amongst kotite and haley. i uess one can infer they were thinking about it but took the perceived safer pick. totally agree on the value thing with lageman, may i add vick and cadigan as well to that. and mangini - for all his antics - couldnt at least play it straight in the middle rounds. that lb was gocong i belive that the eagles snatched away. still to this day we have to wonder about the draft boards with the picks like ducasse, powell, etc etc. oh well.
It's weird, but if a GM truly believes his team in one player away from winning it all, then why take chances on that player still being on the board in a later round. This is exactly why many GMs, Tanny included, try to fill out the roster as best as possible through FA, then enter the draft like icing on a cake and take as many BPA as they can get.
speaking of random- i went to look at the 1981 draft to see who we passed on for mcneil- i never knew LT was taking one pick before us....brutal...anyways, pretty funny- with the 11th pick that year the bears took a guy named keith van horn- still can't believe we didn't take marino.
We seem to be cursed on getting that one great franchise changing player. LT, Marino, Jerry Rice (hard to not be happy with Toon), Favre (The cards would not complete the trade they agreed upon to move us up two picks), Sapp (not game changing but I just had to say Kyle Brady) and Manning (when Parcells refused to commit to taking him so he stayed the extra year in school).
This has been argued to death but I don't believe we would have done any better with Marino than we did with Kenny O'B. In fact, Marino would have probably been crippled earlier behind the various O-lines we had in the 80s.
Marino had an insanely quick release. Even though he wasn't a great scambler he was very difficult to sack because of how quickly he can get rid of the ball. Ken O'Brien would hold the ball forever & take many sacks when he opportunities to throw it away. O'Brien being picked over Marino can't be justified with any type of logic.
I don't doubt that but, having read the supposed list of franchise players we missed out on because of "leftfield" picks - I don't believe any of them would have led us to the Superbowl. I can't think of a Jet team, including the current one, that didn't have at least three or four areas that needed addressing. I don't see an extra SB ring by plugging Marino/Taylor/Sapp into any of those 80s/90s teams. In fact, if we had taken one of those players and gone 11-5 from 7-9 (or whatever), we may have missed out on some good picks in subsequent years.
