Boys, I’m 30, been following these clowns since 98 when I watched them blow out the Panthers. It was at that moment I said,” I’m much better off being a Giants fan than a Jets one, same thing with Mets/Yankees, Knicks/Pistons.” Needless to say, I’m a complete moron.. Here’s my real question though... Despite all these different regimes, players etc how is it that we ALWAYS have the same guys/traits? What are they you ask?: 1-QB’s who are, BEST CASE scenario, game managers.. Guys that can’t under any circumstances bring his team back from a significant deficit. 2- Defenses who don’t have a real pass rusher who sack a guy consistently. * One thing they do have is the ability to send the house and have it be 1/3 as effective as every one when they do it. 3- Linebackers who can’t rush the passer or cover guys, yet are great against the run? 5-Defenses that never get big stops, how many collapses or stops do you not see from these guys late? 5- This is my favorite: drafting guys that magically fall to them despite being considered the best in class or steals, yet, a few years into their career, we see exactly what other teams saw in why they passed. 6- Teams that have a ceiling of being a tough round 2 out. I know folks are gonna blame Woody, but I’m having a hard time with that to a point. As an owner he spends and doesn’t aplear to have involvement in tooo many choices.. Now he may pick the wrong guys to run his team but I’m more forgiving of that, which brings me back to our first point.. All these guys come from diff backgrounds, teams, pedigrees etc..how the hell do we keep getting these exact same results and traits I mentioned?
The one thing that has not changed in the last 25 years or so is the Owner. Is the one constant. One home playoff game since he's the owner. Its the Johnson's dude.Simple as that, they own this shit. F WOODY!!!!
The teams performance has been close to identical to when the Hess owned the team, right down to playoff performances. Johnson had a better win percentage prior to Bowls taking over, but since then it’s dropped in line with the historical winning percentage. That percentage is .450. Johnson is now at .470. Basically, had he made good hires instead of Mac and Bowls, he’d probably be above .500, even closer to .600 at this point. He didn’t, and now he’s tooling around in the UK somewhere. Trash owner.
It ALL starts at the top. Ever since Leon Hess bought controlling interest in the team in the early '70s, it's been mostly downhill for the Jets. Hess was said to be a shrewd and tough negotiator in his petroleum business empire, yet with the Jets, he was a clueless doofus and a pussy. I despised him. He accepted mediocrity. He hired Lawyers and Real Estate people as team Presidents rather than Football men, and the GMs and HCs they hired were mostly inept. He was content to be a second rate franchise never having its own home, but instead being a renter in someone else's stadium. Karma then takes over. When Woody Johnson bought the team, I had high hopes. After all, Hess was gone and Woody was talking about finally getting the Jets their own home. Then he showed how stupid he was. He didn't do his homework and due diligence on the West Side Stadium (WSS) and had no backup plan. When the WSS fell through, he scrambled to co-op with the Giants again. Again, rather than hiring an experienced, knowledgeable man to run the team, Woody wanted to make decisions. He is a trust fund kid. Never worked a day in his life. The Jets were his toy. He has made a LOT of decisions, most of them abysmally bad. He created our current organizational chart where both the HC and GM are peers and report to the owner. Chris Johnson is some better than Woody, but still a dilettante and not smart enough or humble enough to hire an expert to run the team. I truly believe that unless Chris wakes up and hires that quality football man to run the team, and then steps back from all decisions except regarding the future employment of that football man as team President or VP of Football Operations, or Woody and he agree to sell the team, there is no real and lasting hope for us Jets fans.
Good post. The reality is the NFL isn't 32 teams. It's one company that is managed to create and encourage mediocrity and conformity at the expense of excellence. Woody Johnson bought the Jets for 650 million, It's net worth today is about 2.85 billion dollars. Most of the income comes from shared revenue with the other 32 teams. Woody Johnson is a partner with Bob Kraft he is not in competition with Bob Kraft. Where is the incentive when the entire structure of the league is designed to destroy player development and continuity through the salary cap structure.
I'll try to answer your question @Stevied. The answer is I have no clue. "Blake Bortles is having a career day." Ask me if I'm surprised. Go ahead, ask me. No, I'm not surprised. It's amazing how many opposing players have broken personal records, team records, or NFL records against the Jets. I can rattle off at least 5 without even thinking. Most rushing yards in a single game, most rushing yards in a single season, NFL rushing record, NFL passing record in a single game, the list goes on and on it's really amazing. Do they somehow plan this? Where is Leonard Nimoy from 'In Search Of' when you need him?
All your points are valid, but you err in ignoring Occam's Razor: When there are many possible solutions, usually the simplest one is the answer. So, using Occam as our guide we can confidently say "It's ownership". NC laid out the history of Jets ownership, but unless you lived through it you might not really grasp how clueless and inept they were/are. Sure, at times they've spent money, but usually it was in a panic due to the threat of fans boycotting or not showing up, so they just opened the checkbook and issued paper without any real clue how to get a good ROI. Hiring Parcells was a good attempt, but whether it was due to Parcell's burn out, or other differences - maybe the BB fiasco - the continuity was lost. Since then they've gone back to wandering in the woods. Aside from selling the team to somebody with a clue, which isn't going to happen given its profitability, they need to hire a Pres. of Football Ops to run things, to create a vision of what "NY Jets Football" is, and then fulfill it. Werblin and Ewbanks had that, but since them, there has been no blueprint.
When Sony Werblin ran the Jets, pro football was decidedly a competition both on and off the field. There was no salary cap. Werblin was able to both sign and raid other teams for not just players but coaching talent. The Jets ownerships very survival depended on putting an outstanding product on the field that the public was compelled to buy. After the merger and Werblin leaving, the NY Jets were on total cruise control until Hess decided he might like to see a winning team before he died.
Excellent post!!! As a 50 yr old Jet fan I agree wholeheartedly with every word. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
True. It's a whole different ball game - literally - now. That said, many teams since then have built sustainable contenders, sometimes several times, re-tooling and winning again. But, as you said, the Jets ownership has been content to go on cruise control. What a slap in the face to fans! It's really time for Jets fans to signal loud and clear that they won't accept being taken for granted. The trick is, how do you do that? I'm not a STH, but I can fully appreciate the difficulty in giving them up. Hell, even just refusing to watch them, or participate on discussion boards like this is almost impossible after rooting for them for decades, so how do we as fans get the message across? It won't be easy, and may take a lot of sacrifice, but I guess anything worth having is worth the sacrifice. Speaking for myself, I will try to hang in there this one last year, but if by the end of the draft we still have Bowles, and we haven't addressed the major chronic holes in this team I'm done.
From my POV, it looks like since the new CBA was signed the way to do it is draft a talented QB who's able to play at a very high level in at least year 2. You need to have drafted well enough around him so that you can use the cap advantage of having an elite QB on a rookie contract to win now. The Pats seemed to have had Brady playing at a discount for a long time. It wouldn't shock me if he is going to get paid after he leaves in the some form by Kraft. The Pats have won and have gamed the system by having an elite QB below cost for a very long time. They are also known to push the rules. If Sam takes his lumps and turns into an elite QB next year and going forward the Jets are in a great position to move forward quickly. The unknown factor is by drafting the youngest QB in the class does Sam need more time to develop than say Mayfield or Rosen? Rosen looked like a polished pro, elite QB yesterday. Mike McCoy is at best a second tier OC and Wilks is still trying to figure out where the mens room is. Looking at tape of all these guys in College, Rosen looked a little more pro-ready than the other guys. That doesn't mean Sam won't be better. Time does matter because the cap time advantage clock is running.
I was all in on Rosen, but m not sorry they took Sam. Even if Rosen might be somewhat more "naturally" gifted as a passer, he'd get killed behind this OL. The Jets needed a tough, mobile QB and that's not Rosen's strength. I do think he's going to be great and will be sad if he is and Darnold doesn't pan out, either because he wasn't that good (unlikely), or he's ruined by us. Mayfield also would've been a good fit here, but id Sam can stay healthy and not get ruined by the bad habits he'll pick up playing in these conditions, he's going to be better than Baker in the long IMO. Darnold is the ONLY bright spot for this franchise now. Given that, it's hard to understand how the Johnsons can allow his value to be risked by such shitty coaching, but they've tolerated a lot of shit over the years, so I wouldn't be surprised if they show "patience".
