I don't want parity. I want my team to become consistently good enough to compete for the SB every year. Parity doesn't ensure that. In fact, it often works against it. Give me an owner who is smart enough to hire the best football minds and to write checks and to stay our of the way. "Parity" is just a distraction. And the NFL doesn't want parity either. It wants the most revenue generated. Period. It manipulates the rules and how they're enforced to get the outcomes it most desires. The NFL is a giant video game played with real players and coaches. As a Jets fan, I can currently hope for only three things that have little chance of happening: 1. Woody sells the team to an such as I described above. 2. Woody hires a true football expert to run the whole operation without interference. 3. Lightning strikes and somehow they get to the SB despite their total ineptitude. "Parity" won't fix any of that.
Some good points but I gotta disagree in part with "And the NFL doesn't want parity either. It wants the most revenue generated." I think they believe parity gets them the most revenue generated which is why they work so hard to level the playing field. I think they are wrong in that assessment. I think the league generates more money when there are consistent stars and winners in big city franchises like NY, LA, Chicago, Houston/Dallas.
Maybe to an extent but outside of Green Bay and Buffalo, pretty much all of the markets are somewhat large to the point where the disparity to the larger ones isn’t a big deal. The NFL also has a huge advantage over other sports in that there’s limited games and I’d guess a huge percentage of their fans would turn on any random game on any random night and watch the two teams. What Timberwolves fan is going out of their way to watching Hornets/Knicks? Not I, but I’ll watch Vikings/Panthers any day of the week.
yeah but it’s not about you, you are obviously a football guy. It’s about the women or non-football men. They aren’t tuning into Vikings-Panthers ever unless they live there. And more of them live in NY, LA, Chicago, etc
You can go too far with that....just ask NASCAR fans, if you can find any. Better yet, just ask former NASCAR fans. Not my jam, but I know some--they can give you a dissertation on lack of parity and rules manipulation for the sake of maximizing revenue.
Well said. I couldn't agree more with everything you said. I remember seeing somewhere that Rex said somewhere he knew Mark Sanchez wouldn't be a franchise QB. These people know. Another thing that is often overlooked by fans but one almost always hears it mentioned by winning teams and winning organizations. A team could have everything in place people who know what they're doing, manage the cap perfectly or well enough, amass a exceptional level of talent in coaching or players etc. Having the right chemistry. Before I didn't know what it meant but after spending so much time at work I now know exactly what it means. It's a mystery. For a NFL team with the vast numbers of people involved in that kind of workplace it must be incredibly difficult to achieve yet at the same time of the utmost importance..
In terms of parity I had a look at the AFC East since 1970 (so it's an equal number of seasons for each team) and which team had won the division - as they would say on Sesame Street "One of these teams is not liked the others": Jets - 2 Bills - 11 Dolphins - 13 Patriots - 21
Yeah that’s damning…and if you go back since the team was founded I think we’ve only won our division 4 times total Even by sheer chance, we’d have won more divisions just by random luck…so clearly our leadership is a net negative
This debacle of a statistic only strengthens the two main points made by so many: - no amount of "parity" is going to matter if your organization sucks. The Jets are the worst by far and it's not even debatable. The Dolphins and Bills benefited from having a couple of A-plus QBs. The Jets have barely had B- at their best and that's being kind. - having a franchise QB will go a long way. No further clarification needed, see previous point.
Agreed - having a franchise QB is pretty much the determining factor - if you look at the other teams: - Dolphins successes align with Marino - Bills successes align with Kelly and Allen - Patriots success align with Brady The Jets have never had a run of success as they've never had a franchise QB
Absolutely. And at the end of the day, the Jets have not had a franchise quarterback because of the ineptitude of their management. It's not luck of the draw.
I still think the Jets severely missed the boat with Darnold. He came out with excellent arm strength, a good attitude and drive to want to win, good size, off platform ability, enough ability to run and throw on the move. We surrounded him with the worst coaching possible for what he needed (coach away turnovers) and the worst offensive supporting cast in the NFL. It was amazing to watch him come back against Dallas after mono and watch how much better the offense was (with scrubs surrounding him) than when a scrub was quarterbacking.
And they'll never have one because they seem to go out of their way to make sure that they put each new QB in the absolute worst possible position. Sadly, the only way the Jets will ever win a championship (I almost passed out laughing from typing the words Jets and championship in the same sentence), is if they bring in an aging veteran at the end of his career who has actually accomplished something and then somehow manage to catch lightning in a bottle while the rest of the league has a year like this one when we go through 60-some QBs in a season. That's the only way it's happening, because the people running this franchise don't have the first clue about how to even begin developing a QB or a franchise that can put him, as well as the rest of the talent, in a position to be even remotely average, let alone successful.
It's a shame we'll never know whether any of the guys the Jets have drafted could have been franchise quarterbacks with proper coaching and adequate talent. Darnold, even Sanchez, Pennington who was a good quarterback who got injured partially because of his stupid ass coaching staff. The list goes on, and on, and on. I will even be so bold as to throw Zach Wilson into that mix considering how much talent he has, how much promise he showed here and there, and just how bad this coaching staff is at anything related to offense. Hey, you never know.
Lightning in a bottle. That is the only way, 100%. Either because of blind luck, or because they design everything they do that way by mixing and matching styles, systems, etc. That is the only possible way.
OK - "in the relatively modern QB driven era the Jets have never had a franchise QB" (and I only say this as I cba having a long back and forth about the relative merits of Namath)
Exactly…the last time we had a true Franchise QB was Namath and we won it all. Since then, the closest we’ve come is probably O’Brien, Testaverde for a couple years, and Pennington for a couple years…and we were pretty good under those guys. But that’s it…we’ve had crap since and that explains our futility. It’s no mystery. Team success is absolutely and unequivocally tied to having a very good to great QB. Especially in today’s game even more so. If you go back and look at Superbowls, only the Ravens and Bucs have won with kind of journeymen type guys, and that was due to truly generationally elite defenses, and then their success was not really sustained. Today’s game doesn’t allow defense to win championships….the rules are quite literally stacked against the D…you breathe on a receiver downfield and DPI gives the offense the ball down there with a first down…you touch a receiver who wasn’t even targeted on a throw and may be on the other side of the field and that is a defensive holding penalty that gives the offense 5 yards and a first down. You touch the QB wrong (and it’s super subjective and geared to protect the superstars…Zach can get swiped in the facemask and no call while Brady or Mahomes can barely have their helmet grazed and it’s roughing) and that’s 15 yards and a first down. And the hidden one is the subjective offensive holding calls…Mahomes’ OL, like Brady’s before him, can hold all fucking day long and not get flagged. All in the name of letting the superstar QB make a play. So you can’t do it…the rules will not let you do it. And we’ve just not had good QBs so that’s that
