Lupica on Mangini

All I can say is...we really have something in this Mangini guy!!! - gg

Lupica:

Before the biggest win he has had so far as coach of the Jets, in a season when he has coached his team as well as anybody in his sport, Eric Mangini showed his players an old prizefight. He has shown them famous fights out of the past before, had trainer Teddy Atlas, a Jets fan, talk to them before one game. On this night, before the Jets would play the Patriots on the road, before Mangini would make Bill Belichick act small enough again to ride in the Breeders' Cup, he showed the Jets the first Sonny Liston-Cassius Clay fight, Miami Beach, 1964.
There have been so many ways that Mangini has gotten the attention of the Jets since he replaced Herm Edwards, so many different ways he has gotten them to listen and be so much better than they were supposed to be. On this night he used a famous fight from before he was born and before his players were born.

"I explained who Liston had been in the years leading up to that fight," he was saying yesterday. "I told them he was like the young Mike Tyson, how most of his fights were over before they even started because the other guy didn't think he had a chance.

"But I told them Clay was different from all the others, and this was before he became Muhammad Ali. He was different because he knew that he couldn't win a fight if he was afraid to fight. I wasn't trying to tell our players that the Patriots were going to quit the way Liston did that night. They've been much too great and have way too much pride. My point was that we couldn't beat them if we didn't fight them.

"That's exactly what we did Sunday. And when it was all on the line at the end, we didn't just fight them, we beat them."

The game of the day, or night, was supposed to be the Giants vs. the Bears. The Jets beating the Patriots in Foxboro was a better game, a better story, it was the Jets who for this one Sunday looked like the best team in town. We have now played nine games of this NFL season. Eric Mangini's Jets, who were supposed to do nothing this year, even with an easy schedule, are now one game worse in the standings than Belichick's Patriots and one game worse than the Giants.

Now the Jets get a crack at the Bears at Giants Stadium, Sunday at 1. Nobody knew what the Jets were getting when they hired a 35-year-old coach off Belichick's staff. Now we know. He is going to be around a long time, and he is going to be a big winner here before he is through. Go ahead and say it again: There isn't another coach in the league doing a better job than he is right now, not Tony Dungy, not Sean Payton, not Marty Schottenheimer, not anybody.

This was supposed to be the season that set up all the rest of the seasons for Mangini with the Jets. Suddenly it feels like so much more, especially after Jets 17, Patriots 14 on the road Sunday, and a look on Belichick's face when he had to shake Mangini's hand that made all Jets fans want to wear party hats.

Yesterday, Mangini was asked about the end of Sunday's game, what it was like watching it from the sideline, watching his team try to win the kind of game Tom Brady is supposed to win and the Jets are supposed to lose, even when Brady is out of timeouts with a minute left.

"That wasn't the moment of truth for me," he said. "It was after they scored to make it 17-14, with just over four minutes left. That's when I thought, Okay, here's where we find out what we're all about. Could we do the same things we talk about all the time in practice? Could we make first downs and eat up clock and make them burn timeouts? If we had to give the ball back, could our special team execute? Where was the punt going to end up, on their 10-yard line or 20, or wherever?"

Mangini paused, as if the whole thing were playing out in front of him, not because he was watching the tape he had just watched, but because those four minutes were already carved into his memory.

"And finally," he said, "could our defense stop one of the truly great quarterbacks, one who always seems to be at his best in moments like that? Could we do all those things against a team like the Patriots on the road?"

Another pause.

"And we did," Mangini said.

No one knew about him, no one knew if Chad Pennington could come back, no one knew who was going to run the ball for Mangini's Jets or stop the run. Maybe some of this will catch up with the Jets, starting Sunday. Or maybe there are enough games they can win down the stretch to be playing for the playoffs at the end. It all starts with the young coach out of Hartford, out of that glorified ballboy job with the Browns, off that team, the Kew Colts, he coached in Australia, off Belichick's staff in New England.

"We talk a lot around here about finishing," Eric Mangini said yesterday morning. "Finish the play, finish the drive, finish the game. Finish right on the practice field every single day. Those are some of the core values I want to be Jet values. And when I saw they were sinking in, I really believed we were going to have a chance, week in and week out."

The coach of the Jets got them to listen. Now he gets them to fight.

Originally published on November 14, 2006

 

I love the core value thing - and I love the idea of "finishing!" That's something Parcells used to say - you need to finish because you never know if you'll be in this position again...

...with this guy, I'm betting we'll be in this position or better many times in our future!