On the defensive side, you have these enormous monstrous human beings, all strong as an ox and faster than a speeding bullet, willing to bite, rip and maul anyone in their way as they attempt to get the QB or runner. Where to find other humans who are willing and capable of dealing with this onslaught. They must be as rare as hen’s teeth. But luckily the Jets had such brave guys. The 5 stalwarts JD inherited in 2019 to do this job were named Kelvin Beachum, Alex Lewis, Jonathan Harrison, Brian Winters and Brandon Shell. All household names. Sarcasm over, JD has tried various players in the past 3 years to replace that woeful group. Given the short time he had in his takeover before the start of the 2019 season, he had to resort to stopgap stuff, which didn’t work out. Given a bit longer period, he has replaced the entire group with players with great potential. It remains to be seen how that potential plays out, but he has done more than a creditable job with positions of great difficulty. A house is only as strong as its foundation. Our rookie QB played through one of the most awkward years on record. Brand new coaches and players learning on the job, second tier players, injuries, no practice time before game 1, and so on. Judgements on ZW are much better made during this coming season. Did he play well..only at times. Will he play better..we will see. JD will rise or fall on the next 2 years of ZW. I am very old and I grew up watching football when there were far less teams. Talent was more concentrated. Rookie QB usually sat behind the starter for a couple.3 years. Learning on the job has a price. I had a long career where I hired many people new to their jobs and had to accept the learning curve. I could go on with the defensive replacements he had to get, with the amount of draft picks he has compiled, and so on. Has he been perfect. NO Are we satisfied with the current roster. NO. Do we have draft opportunities to get better, Yes. Lets wait till mid season to evaluate the team after all new personnel have been integrated. Douglas doesn’t operate in a vacuum. 31 other teams are competing for talent. Great players often can decide on their team. Jets might not be in consideration. Balance has to be made between short and long term considerations. Its a complicated business. I think JD is on the right track.
Great post. Like you say Joe isn't operating in vacuum and we have 31 other competitors for talent. I liked Joe's moves this offseason. And I think he is the right guy for the job. But if results don't come soon, he will be on shaky ground. We have been picking top 5 for a long time now and if next year is another Top 5 pick, I doubt Joe will survive. But I am rooting for him honestly. I like his trades and loved his 2021 draft. Not a huge fan of his FA additions to be honest but we shall see.
Great post! Thanks for bringing some common sense to the forum and for being a voice of reason. Please post more often.
If you don't like his FA additions, whom would you have had him add in FA this year? Did we miss some player that you really wanted or a position that we didn't address? Are you disappointed that we didn't sign a big name player or players to a large contract? We desperately needed help at TE. The two best TEs never made it to FA. I thought that he'd only add one TE in FA, but he added two, really solidifying the position with two quality additions. Both are excellent receivers and blockers, and high character types. Uzomah is a leader and having been with Cincinnati has experience in what we are going through. He WANTED to be here and to be part of the growth/improvement of our team. I don't know what more you could want or expect in FA than that!!!! Both can give us several years, but especially Conklin, since he's only 24. We desperately needed an upgrade at RG, and we got the best scheme fit, one who knows the scheme, has experience with MLF, and who is a Pro Bowl OG. Again, what more could you ask? At CB we needed to add a veteran who is more of a ballhawk than what we had, yet who is excellent in zone coverage. That is Reed. He may not have a big name, but he is very good, is young, and an ascending player, not an older player on the decline. At S we added one of the top 3 safeties available in FA. Our safeties were awful last season vs the run, and Whitehead excels at playing the run. We've had problems stopping opposing teams' screen passes for years, and Whitehead also excels at diagnosing and stopping them. He is also good in coverage and versatile. In addition, he re-signed Lamarcus Joyner, whom the Jets like a lot and who never got to play last season, and Will Parks a solid vet. At Edge, he added a young fast player in Jacob Martin who is depth signing. He will probably be our fastest Edge, and will help when we play teams with running QBs like Josh Allen or Lamar Jackson. He will be able to run them down, or at least have a better chance than some of the other Edges. I never thought we would or should sign a big name, expensive player, not with the quality and quantity of Edges in this draft. He kept stability in our QB room, which is what Saleh and MLF wanted. He re-signed the Kicker who was good for us last season. He re-signed Berrios who was very good for us as both a receiver and return man last season, when one of the criticisms of the Jets is that we don't keep our own. I'm disappointed that we weren't able to sign a better vet in FA, but there wasn't much there to begin with, and I wanted no part of trading for either Cooper or Ridley. He didn't sign a lesser player just to sign someone or sign someone who wasn't a scheme fit, but was a big name just to make a splash. He could still sign Marquez Valdes-Scantling, or a depth-type WR, or trade for Cooks, and I'm certain that he will strongly address the WR position in the draft. IMO this is the right way to go. One has to draft one's playmakers and stars, not try to sign them in FA. I thought he might have signed some OL depth, but he still could. RG was the biggie and he nailed the signing of Tomlinson. The only thing I was really disappointed with regarding FA was that we didn't add a DT other than re-signing Shepherd. Hopefully, the re-signing of Shepherd was only insurance in case we don't get the NT we want in the draft, or sign a camp cut who is better. I don't know whether he did or not, but I imagine that JD did speak with the agents of at least a couple of the DTs who were FA, particularly DJ Jones of the 49ers. There was another, I think I remember hearing that JD spoke with his agent, but the player wanted too much money and signed elsewhere. I like that JD isn't willing to grossly overpay to get players to come here. Being willing to grossly overpay shows weakness and desperation. JD wants players who want to be here. He also is focusing on signing younger, cheaper players who still have ceiling and who could help us for a while, rather than on older, declining, more expensive players. I also like that after the problems we had with FA injuries last season, he also focused this year on players who had no injury histories. I truly don't know what else one could ask for from our GM. I think he's doing an awesome job.
I believe he has a plan and isn't listening to noise from the fanbase or media. But, this is a results oriented business and the team needs to at least play meaningful games past Halloween or his seat will warm up.
JD has had a decent FA period this season. His best so far, but that is partly because he has been terrible at it. And with a lot of money to spend. "Kelvin Beachum, Alex Lewis, Jonathan Harrison, Brian Winters and Brandon Shell." Yet that o-line won 7 games with Sam friggin Darnold under center. It was at that point JD promised Sam he'd have a better o-line the next year - which didn't happen over the next two seasons. Enough with this long and winding road stuff. JD will be easier to defend after he fields a team that isn't drafting top 5 every year.
OK, thanks! If Lawson is healthy, I think he will have a great year. I also expect Davis to be a lot better. With Tomlinson beside McGovern, he should be even better. Joyner should be good for us. Hopefully GVR will be gone. I think you may change your mind on previous FAs following this season, or maybe even during the season.
"Praise us as we are tasted, allow us as we prove; our head shall go bare till merit crown it." ------Shakespeare.
I really struggled to understand what the OP was trying to say initially. But it's pretty obvious that JD needs to do a better job and it is also appears that he HAS done a better job. I like the way the team is shaping up but we won't know until they start to play. I don't really see why restating these obvious facts merits another new thread but there we are...
Because what you say is obvious is not what others see. I am the original OP and the reason I did the thread is because of the enormous amounts of comments, including some above, on this site and others, about the poor job JD has done in drafting and free agency and the woeful record under his leadership. If I come across as lecturing, I don't mean to and apologize. Almost all individuals and organizations follow some kind of S curve, where they start out slowly and dip as they go through trial and error and learning curves. If they then become successful they show vastly increased performance until they peak and then tail off. Sometimes they never do get the upswing and they fail and go out of businesss or in the case of people just never overcome deficiencies. The shape of the curve is always different, can even be a checkmark type, but if the entitiy is around long enough there will be a tailing off. Then the entity needs some kind of change to resart the S curve. For the past many years the jets never got an upswing. I personally count 2021 as the beginning of a new cycle and rate JD's performance from that time on. I think they are on the upswing.
Totally agree. And neither do I know what people expect given recent history. Trust in the process. JD is doing a great job dragging this team out of the doldrums. He is making very sensible decisions and of course they have to play out over time but I've got more faith in JD than anyone we've had since Parcells. Our talent selection over the last ten years has been shocking but it is demonstrably better now. The last draft was good. This free agency is positive. I look forward to the draft in April. We are in so much better shape. Please let's start getting upbeat about our longer term prospects. I am.
I'm not sure this analogy pertains to NFL teams. A bad owner is hard to overcome because you can't fire them and every organizational decision originates with them. They hire the guy who picks the players and the coach. Some owners are just consistently dumb and some are consistently smart. Pretty much every owner is very old too, so I don't know how much chance most of them have of seriously changing their ways. They're also all very successful people otherwise which usually brings an ego along with it, which further works against the ability to change. I will say, the NFL is definitely designed for parity so that does help. I think that has the function of consistently making bad teams decent ones rather than making bad teams perennial contenders though.
Your points about ownership are valid but i dont see the discrepancy with my logic. In fact, i think it reinforces it. If a team is bad..no real sustained upswing..and the root cause is poor ownership decisions, and the decision making doesnt change, then the cycle doesnt regenerate. Without change the s curve never has the upswing. I think woody didmake a change in decision making. He really did turn the reins over to douglas. We have no way of knowing what woody is doing behind the scenes, but nothing seems apparent.
There were definitely signs of progress with Douglas - namely the organization finally making the coach answer to the GM rather than both to the owner. He's also definitely the best GM we've had in the last decade or so. To play devil's advocate though I'm not at all convinced by Saleh and JD hired him. I think we have quite a bit of evidence Saleh is not a good coach and most people acting like he is are doing so primarily because he's enthusiastic and positive, which is covering up some severe deficiencies as a coach. His personality blurring his questionable coaching is especially stark because of how much better of a personality he has contrasted with Gase's. Saleh was a supposed defensive guru who didn't have a good defense in SF until they hit on a lot of first round DL and his first year with us gave us the worst defense in franchise history. LaFleur has been the lone bright spot of Saleh's tenure so far, Saleh himself and Ulbrich have been awful. It's a shame for JD because he's been a decent GM otherwise but you usually don't get to hire another coach if the first one is bad. I'm not saying Saleh is for sure a bad coach and always will be by the way, just that we have a lot more reason to think he's a bad one than a good one so far.
Saleh didnt impress me either last year. Still, as i claim, the learning curve in the begining means performance will suffer a bit. The curve turns down before going up. I wonder if he insisted lefluer go to the box. That would be a good sign. I look forward to this season to see what else happens. Has he learned anything from 2021 and how will that be applied in 2022.
