I agree with most of this post, but at the moment I am very glad that we did trade for Cro and paid him to stay as I hate to think what our secondary would look like without him.
I have to disagree with a bunch of people in regards to the trades Tanny made. It looks worse now because we could have used the picks for depth, but at the end of the day this team and GM took a shot. They tried to get to the superbowl and yes it didn't happen, but he still was a GM who helped construct a team that went to two AFC championship games. We might be better off now, but that doesn't mean that we would have a better shot at the superbowl now then we did in 09 and 10. In regards to his drafts lately they still need to play out. I think we will learn a lot about Kyle Wilson the rest of the way. Vlad Ducasse is still a wild card. Mcknight is also tough to say as well. Mo Wilkerson and Kerley definitely look like worthy picks though for their positions. Coples has the potential to be the same and has shown flashes. Davis is tough to say right now. Hill has shown some potential. To me where Tanny has screwed up is the contracts with Pace, Scott, and Sanchez. He guaranteed Pace and Scott's contracts for extra cap space. He extended Sanchez for extra cap space now as well. Those moves had too big a risk for the reward. You are locking yourself into a potentially bad contract for an immediate benefit. I get some of the anger directed at Tannenbaum, but he still was the one who made deals to create a team that could contend. The point is who actually thought the Santonio Holmes trade was really bad at the time? How about the Braylon Edwards trade? Oh by the way I think he should get some credit for not signing Braylon. I was definitely one of those people who wanted him back but he doesn't seem to be the same guy.
The irony is those were Tanny's best player personnel moves, for the most part. The draft picks he has kept have been mostly squandered anyway.
Shotty wasn't the core problem he never was in my eyes,this has always been a talent problem on offense, it doesn't matter who our offensive coordinator is if we don't have enough talent on the field to work with in the first place, and that falls on Tannenbaum
I think Tanny put us in position to win a SB with the 08 and 09 squads. Favre got hurt and he took a shot with a rookie QB. He missed it by that much. We have to do a rebuild, I'm guessing 3 to 5 years we are right back in serious contention. The guy took his shot and got pretty close there are plenty of good GM's who haven't done any better.
We didn't pay Cro to stay. We bid against ourselves after he'd been on the market for a full week. We let him go and then overpaid to get him back because that's what it took to do it at that point. We spent that week trying to overpay even more heavily for Asomugha. The Eagles won that battle. Both franchises are disappointments at 11-11 since the fateful week that they decided to try to add another shut down corner to the one they already had. Andy Reid is spending this bye week evaluating his team from top to bottom to figure out why they have disappointed over the last year and a half. He should start at himself for over-paying for Asomugha in free agency a year ago. That's gotten the Eagles a very average performance against the pass the last two seasons. This despite having a good pass rush both years. Rex should do some of that too when the Jets bye week rolls around. The Jets pass defense has been better than the Eagles the last two seasons, despite losing out on Asomugha. The run defense has collapsed on them though. Maybe that's due to having too much money tied up in the cornerbacks at this point. Maybe not. Rex should look at it anyway and figure out what's going on there. I'll bet he never guessed that he'd wind up with corners like Revis and Cromartie and see the defense deteriorate steadily year over year anyway.
You're giving credit for personnel moves to a guy that works the numbers and signs off on the personnel decisions that are handed to him by guys like Cohen and Bradway. The biggest problem here is that while it's technically true that he has 'final say' in signing off on those moves, he is not really making those decisions. The GM is not a personnel guy and apparently doesn't know how to hire them to help him pull his head out of his ass, so he spends draft picks like currency making up for their incompetence. It's a lose-lose situation, and while the Jets have fielded a 'competitive' team, they have jumped the shark in terms of being 'championship contenders' because that wheeling and dealing with draft picks hurts you in the long run. That's what we're seeing happen to this team.
Mr. T, and Woody share the blame for the state of the current team. T's drafts have been suspect at best. Woody's decision to bring in Tebow was, and still is a nightmare. The money would have been spent better on the O line or at WR.
Mr. T is to blame for the Jets making the AFC Championship 2 out of the last 3 seasons. Terrible job.
Choosing drafting over trading isn't necessarily better. If you trade well, you'll have good players.
But how can you say this? Super Bowl bowls aren't won by teams that trade their draft picks well. They're won by teams that draft well. Look at who has actually won the Super Bowls and figure out where the talent on the teams has come from. In order to suggest that trading is as good as drafting you need to either look at non-existent results (fantasy world) or you need to project trading as a future strategy that will inevitably lead to Super Bowls now that somebody (the Jets) has made it a big time strategy. I gotta tell you that looking at the Jets the last few seasons is evidence the other way. The evidence they are accumulating about trading is that it drags a team down over time.
You need a larger sample. The Patriots, Giants and Jets are only three teams. Maybe the numbers will prove that you are correct, but I'm not yet convinced. Do a more comprehensive study.
You don't need to do a study. Just point to the teams who traded draft picks for veterans and won Super Bowls. You can't find them. The closest you come are the Giants and their trade was a trade up to the 1 pick that involved other picks on their part. So the pick for vet angle wasn't involved. When you're looking for a two-headed dog all you need to do is listen for stereo barking. When you don't find that anywhere the odds become pretty good that two-headed dogs don't exist.
We got be fair and say we knew we were headed for a talent drain and a “win now” situation in 2009. We gave Mark and a bunch of old FAs large contracts and traded a lot of draft picks. So we knew Tanny was going to really have to wheel and deal to keep pace in 2011 – 2012. Also note the difference in Tanny’s drafting since Rex got here vs when Mangini was here. Mangini plus Tanny = solid drafts. Rex plus Tanny = crummy drafts. For example, we are spending a lot of picks on defense and most are not panning out. Don’t you think Rex had a lot to do with those picks. Afterall he is the defensive genius. I also feel like Mark was a Rex pick. IMO he thought Mark was Joe Flacco version 2. Then there is Woody getting more and more desperate to stay in the limelight. You know he is making Tanny’s job difficult. It just seems strange that Tanny would be great for 3 years and then suddenly be crappy. There has to be more factors involved. But you are right that in the end the results determine how good of a job you did. Tanny lately hasn’t done so great.
I think you are splitting hairs and over reacting. The GM is the head of his department. He is judged by how well his department does. And his department has fielded competative teams. The Jets are perhaps missing a great pass rusher and good QB. Ok, so are most teams. I don't see the impending doom quite as clearly as you do. The Giants were a 9-7 team that went to the SB last year - a competative team that hit a hot streak with a great QB and good pass rush.
Fair? You want to be fair to a GM/FO that knew they were in a win-now situation and yet brought in a raw rookie QB with 1 year of starting experience in college? Really?
Your stats do not whole heartedly back up your argument. Jets % of first round picks 6/7 is as good as the 5/6 for the other two. Jets % of 2nd round picks 3/3 (100%) is way better than the 3/7 for Gmen - same players left with 4 less picks. Jets % of 3rd round picks 3/3 (100%) same amount of players as Pats 3/8 and better % than the 4/6 of the Gmen. The Pats have been very successful in their 2nd rounders and the Gmen in the 4th. Half of the # of player advantage still on the roster for both are 5th-7th rounders are not a real big deal. That said I do agree with you and I do not agree with the way have traded away picks.
Under Mangini we drafted 6, 16ish, and somewhere else in the early 20s I believe. Under Rex we drafted late 20s, late 20s, 16ish. That might contribute to it. Someone correct me as I don't remember the drafts too far back
I think the point that I was trying to make was that you can't build a great team by concentrating all the value in the 1st round of the draft. That just doesn't work. You can't get enough 1st round picks to maintain depth and your busts absolutely kill you - since most of the value on the rister in in those few high picks. Injuries kill you because of depth. The salary cap kills you eventually because 1st round picks make more on each level of contract than the guys drafted behind them. A 1st rounder gets a big first contract and then if he works out an even bigger second deal. Other guys are more leverage-able into taking a team friendly deal in the first few years of their rookie contract when they still haven't made a lot of money and have no idea if they ever will. Concentrating value in the 1st round just makes for a thin team that is overly vulnerable to the normal misfortunes that all NFL franchises periodically sustain.
