Underrated Bruce Harper RB 1977-1984 "Hey, there's a reason Fireman Ed wore a Harper jersey for most of his reign as Caesar of the Meadowlands. The running back was a truly electrifying, do-everything type player. The all-time leader in kickoff returns for the Jets, he was their regular punt returner as well. He also averaged nearly five yards-per-rush and 11 yards-per-reception out of the backfield for his eight-year career. Harper played in an era (1977-1984) where teams didn't throw the football nearly as much as they do now, but if I had to compare him to anyone currently, he'd be Darren Sproles." Lance Mehl LB 1980-1987 " It's hard getting noticed when you're a linebacker in New York if you wear No. 56 and your name isn't Lawrence Taylor. The majority of Mehl's career overlapped with LT's, so he flew under the radar for basically all of his professional life. But Mehl was a big playmaker. He had two huge playoff performances against Cincinnati and Oakland in 1982 as the Jets made it to the AFC Championship game. He led the Jets in interceptions in 1983 with seven, and he made the Pro Bowl in 1985. A knee injury helped end his career early, but that didn't stop him from being voted to the All-Time Jets team. If he had played 10 healthy seasons, he'd be viewed as one of the one or two best Jets defensive players ever - even ahead of guys like Mark Gastineau and Joe Klecko." James Hasty DB 1988-1994 " I can still recall Bills wide receiver James Lofton saying throughout the 1990s how he consistently voted James Hasty for the Pro Bowl (he finally made it twice later on in his career with the Chiefs). The Bills were on their magical yearly Super Bowl runs but Buffalo had the utmost respect for the Jets cornerback. Hasty was an in-your-face player whom no wideout liked to go up against. He intercepted 24 passes in six years with New York, and continued his success when he went to Kansas City. If Darrelle Revis is the best defensive back in franchise history, Hasty is the second best." Rob Moore WR 1990-1994 "Poor Rob Moore. A phenomenally talented receiver who was saddled with a horrendous group of quarterbacks to play with: Ken O'Brien (whose career was ending), Browning Nagle, Boomer Esiason and Jack Trudeau. Still, Moore was able to average over 60 catches a season from 1990 to 1994. He went on to have the same type of success in Arizona, where he played with: Dave Krieg (whose career was ending), Boomer Esiason (Again! Stop following me!), Kent Graham, Stoney Case, Dave Brown and Jake Plummer. I'll flip you for which team had the better list of quarterbacks. I'm just glad Moore's career will be forever remembered on the silver screen - as it was him catching passes from Krieg in the movie Jerry Maguire during the climactic scenes. And no, he is not Hootie." Chad Pennington QB 2000-2007 "I don't think Jets fans really appreciate everything he brought to the table in his injury-plagued career. In his healthy years, he got the Jets: a division title and a playoff win (2002), within a Doug Brien field goal of the AFC Championship game (2004), and to the playoffs again (2006). So in three healthy seasons he took them pretty far - and that's dealing with decreasing arm strength in every passing season. But that's only part of his story. It's hard to play quarterback in New York and do everything right, but he found a way. From renegotiating his contract for salary cap relief to knowing how to deal with the media to being an inspiration to his teammates by playing through pain, Pennington was special. He knew how to lead. I'm bummed he was robbed of what could have been at the least a Hall-of-Very-Good career. And there's no way he would ever wear a thin green headband to talk to reporters."
Overrated Freeman McNeil RB 1981-1992 "Full disclosure: I still own his throwback jersey. And he had a good career. But for someone drafted number three overall, you expect a little more. OK, a lot more. He played 16 games in a season once. He ran for 1,000 yards twice. And he started more than nine games in a season four times in his 12-year career. Early on, the Jets realized he could never be the mail-carrying superstar he was projected to be, so he became part of a two-headed rushing attack with Johnny Hector. In the schoolyard when we played football, everyone wanted to be Hector and I was the only one who wanted to be McNeil. I was way behind the curve back then, but his jersey still looks nice." Marvin Jones MLB 1993-2003 "I jumped up and down when the Jets took him with the fourth overall pick in 1993. Man, was he something to watch at Florida State. It seemed like he was the only guy on the field at times for the Seminoles, roaming sideline to sideline to make virtually every tackle. But instead of a dominant monster in the middle of the Jets defense, they got a solid player. It's nice to have those guys, but you can get them anywhere. At number four overall you want someone a little more special (see above: McNeil, Freeman). Jones was generally banged up for most of the first half of his career, and when he finally made All-Pro in 2000, he was 28-years-old. The most damning piece of evidence against Jones is that when the Jets released him he was only 31. You should still have a lot left in the tank at that point as an inside linebacker. However no team signed him after that and his career was over." LaMont Jordan RB 2001-2004 "Curtis Martin was winding down his Hall of Fame career and the Jets had Jordan waiting in the wings to take over. He was young, hungry and a bowling ball out of the backfield. In limited responsibility, Jordan made Jets fans' mouths water with visions of Earl Campbell-type runs when the top job was his. When he would score touchdowns he would pretend to cut down the goalpost with an electric saw. The buzz surrounding him from Jets fans was tremendous. But, in his first four years he was never able to forge his way into more playing time. Then you started to wonder: was he only good in small doses? In a smart move the Jets - and how many times can you ever say those six words in a row - let him go to Oakland as a free agent for a five-year, $27.5 million contract. He did finally run for 1,000 yards and catch 70 passes in 2005, but after a knee injury he never again topped 600 yards on the ground in a season." Kerry Rhodes DB 2005-2009 "If there were no playbooks in the NFL, and teams just drew up plays in the dirt ("You're the bottle cap and I'm the piece of glass...") Rhodes would have been the greatest safety who ever lived. He was a ballhawking player who freelanced way more than he should have, thus holding him back from true greatness. I must have said at least five times in every game he played "Where was Rhodes on that one?" His stats always looked good, but they overshadowed his true value. He also upset plenty in the Jets organization by seeming to be just as interested in an entertainment career as he was in football. Seriously, check out his Wikpedia page. They list nine achievements he had with the Jets during his five seasons and 27 combination TV shows/magazines he was featured in. Considering how Rex Ryan, who has a fierce loyalty to his players, got tired of him and traded him after coaching him for just one season, that should tell you something." Bart Scott LB 2009-2012 "It didn't take four years and him being released to see Scott was overrated. Sometimes a player gets out of the shadow of a superstar like Ray Lewis and shows how he's a true star in his own right. That didn't happen. When it was time for him to be the man, we saw he wasn't the player he was signed to be (six years/$48 million). I can't tell you how many times in year one in New York I watched Scott be out of position and unable to make the plays he was supposed to. And it never got better. By the last two years his spot on the team was in jeopardy. When you give someone that much money, you expect at least one Pro Bowl out of him, but the only game in Hawaii he was selected to play in during his career came in 2006 when he was with Baltimore. Scott is entertaining, smart and has a great TV career ahead of him. But on the field for the Jets his bark was worse than his bite, except for his "Can't Wait" sound-byte that I used to have as my ring tone." http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap10...ork-jets-alltime-underrated-overrated-players
That is an awful list. Moore was overrated if anything, we kept expecting him to take that next step and he never could, he blossomed in Arizona but for us he was a bit of a disappointment. Still a good player but not as good as we expected. Freeman was underrated, he's the best runner in jets history, durability kept him out of the elite but he was a dynamic RB when healthy. Bart was excellent his first 2 years, well worth the signing. He was vastly underrated until he struggled in 2011.
Pennington was one of the best play-action passers in the game. He faked the camera guys out all the time. Sanchez, should take a note of Pennington faking prowess. Injuries and already fairly weak arm were the catalyst to Pennington short reign at QB.
How can Kerry Rhodes be over-rated? He has been a starting safety since the day he was drafted in the 4th round. He is arguably the best FS in Jets history. Gay bashing by the league.
there is no way McNeil or Scott are overrated. Marvin Jones had some unfortunate injuries which vastly affected his career. I don't think that makes him overrated though. i'd add Keyshawn Johnson and John Abraham to the overrated. they had the talent, but not the right attitude or heart, which really limited their potential here in NY. So they underachieved big time, not based on injuries, but based on themselves. But many fans still carry the torch for them. That is what overrated is all about. btw, i agree with the Kerry Rhodes being on the list for similar reason.
Wow, you guys really think it was that bad of an article? I think the underrated list was excellent and I agree with all of them. The overrated list is weighted a little to heavily in modern times, it's weak and not as good. I think he's right on about Marvin Jones, though.
I think marvin Jones had a nice career, he had a serious injury as a rookie and never could fulfill the promise he had when we drafted him but he had a very good career all things considered.
Harper, Mehl, Hasty and Pennington are all very good underrated choices, so the list has some merit there.
A LB drafted 4th overall, and he wasn't even the best LB on his own team, ever. Let alone a top LB in the league. Mo Lewis was a much better player than him, and would get my vote on an all underrated Jets team.
Underrated Mark Sanchez QB 2009-Present "Drafted #5 overall in the 2009 NFL Draft, Sanchez led his team to the AFC Championship Game his rookie season. At one point in the game, he threw an 80 yard touchdown pass to Braylon Edwards. The Jets also held a 17-6 lead. The following year, he returned the Jets to the AFC Championship Game, and nearly led them back to victory, after trailing 24-0. His first two seasons, the Jets won 4 playoff games, the most for a Jets starting QB in team history. In 2011, the Jets finished (8-8). In 2012, despite his offense being decimated by injury, Sanchez still led the team to impressive wins against playoff bound Indianapolis, and a thrilling 48-28 win over Buffalo."
Mo is the best LB I have seen in jets history and is vastly underrated but you have to factor what marvin overcame w/ the hip injury. There was talk his career was over in 1993 and he came back to be a very good LB for many years for us.
Aaron Glenn is the second best CB in Jet's history. Hasty was good but Glenn was better he just played for really crappy teams at the start of his career. If you look at pro-football-reference.com they get the relationship between the two down almost perfectly with their AV number. Glenn played 8 seasons for a 62 AV, peaking at 10 and 11 in his prime with the Jets. Hasty played 7 seasons with the Jets for a 50 AV, peaking at 8 3 times. Glenn made the Pro Bowl twice with the Jets and Hasty not at all. Chad wasn't under-rated, he was rated exactly as he should have been as a good QB when healthy who wasn't healthy often enough. If you look at his first season as a starter then he's under-rated by quite a bit but he never reproduced that effect again in his career, even in his last season with the Fins.
I'll admit, I'm probably guilty as one of the Jets fans who never fully appreciated what Pennington brought to the table. I'll say this about him. History will be much kinder to him than how he was in the moment. As analytics and the "moneyball" approach to constructing teams starts to take a bigger role in football in the coming years, Pennington will be looked at as a player underrated for his efficiency and production. He might have not had the ideal arm strength, athletic ability, or body, but a QB that doesn't make mistakes, is accurate, efficient and consistent? That's something you can build around. I don't want to turn this into a Sanchez thread, but MS is almost the exact opposite of Pennington. He's the complete opposite of consistent, you never know what you are going to get from him on a game by game, even play by play basis. He's vastly inefficient. Throwing incompletion after incompletion but occasionally making up for it with a great pass, used to be call "gunslinger" but in analytics, that's called inefficient and is not the type of player you want. I don't think it was a bad decision to get rid of Pennington when they did. It's better to get rid of a player one year too early than one year too late, which is what they did. Also, his struggles with injuries made it tough to continue to hang your hat on. But I under appreciated his production ON the field, I admit.
Aaron Glenn should be at the top of the overrated list. James Hasty was so much better than the overrated Glenn who was routinely torched by any decent WR. hasty didn't make the PB w/ us b/c we stunk, Mo Lewis never made it until we started winning. hasty wasn't around when we started winning.
Glenn might've been better, but Hasty was the one that was underrated. All Jets fans speak highly of Glenn, then and now, but Hasty never got the notoriety here in NY that Glenn did. Which is why he should and did make the underrated list. Plus, and maybe it's unfair of me, but I have an uneasy feeling in my stomach thinking about Glenn ever since the fake spike.
To be fair about the fake spike game he was a rookie and most of the D got faked out BUT Glenn was always torched by good WRs, I think we overrate him b/c he was a playmaker w/ the ball in his hands whether off an INT or on a KR and people remember that stuff and forget how he was always torched or how we had that great run in 1998 w/o him.
If MS was a smarter QB he would learn the effectiveness of play faking and master it. He has a gun that is worn down now from hits, but there was a time when he threw BOMBS on the #'s to Braylon Edwards. If you can get the defense to hesitate for a second a speedy receiver can get the separation for the Big game. Pennington was a MASTER at getting that defense to hesitate.
