W/ the Fo's mistake: The Jet fans are the biggest losers

First off, nobody should be ripping Kurt for expressing his personal views on the draft. He's entitled to blow off steam just like any of the rest of us. Secondly, Kurt's been a valuable contributor to the board long before becoming a mod and his knowledgable opinion has always been right on, IMO. So anyone who doesn't like this thread should just refrain from reading it. If truth be known, there isn't one green-blooded, die-hard Jets fan out there who wasn't deflated upon hearing the news that Belichick reached out, kissed Moss' ass with his Saturday night phone call and then pulled off this inexpensive acquisition the following day.

Having said all that, I'm still okay with the draft. And according to some sports writers and commentators as of this morning, I'm not alone because the overall estimation is that we didn't do as badly as our myopic views as fans makes us think we did.

Not to use what's sure to become a Jets FO cliche' in the coming months, but we really did trade quantity for quality. I was firmly entrenched in the Justin Blalock camp, but we all saw how much further he dropped than 25. I would have preferred him, but it's not a perfect world and when I heard that we had taken possibly the best CB on the board, I was elated. Same thing with the LB pick.

Come on fellas, we addressed 4 VERY needy positions with this draft and did it with a precision cutting tool as opposed to using a chainsaw. All four of these picks are good, solid picks. I'd much rather have that than a sackful of 14 picks, none of whom stand out.

As far as Moss is concerned, he's a stubborn, disturbed, uncooperative head-case and will prove as disruptive in Belichick's lockerroom as he has everywhere else he's been. Not returning phone calls of his coaches, not obeying rules, always assuming he's "being picked on," etc. His season last year was dismal to say the least, yet he blames it on others. A leopard doesn't change spots. I'm not concerned about Moss. In fact, I look forward to reading about how much of a distraction he eventually creates in their lockerrom.

 

Pats

I thought the Pats were idiots for giving miami a second rounder for the wes kid, but now that evens out with giving a 4th to Oakland.
Seriously though, the Pats have spent the money to cost them the core of their team in 3 years. Brady's gonna demand a payout one of these years. I think Billy's looking for a 4th ring and an early retirement.

 

If Moss causes a distraction he will be cut. There will be a 0 tolerance attitude towards him, I'm sure. It's a one year deal so they take no cap hit for doing so. That said, I'm sure he wouldn't have been a distraction with the Jets either because of his friendship with Pennington. Where he has always been a problem is where his team has been constant losers. The problems in Minnesota and Oakland all started when the team started or already was losing.

 

Any team that can get to the Qb, and Run the Ball with authority, is a threat to the Pats.


Incidentally, that is exactly the direction the FO went, so far.

 

This is our second year of rebuilding! Now we can concentrate on the other three or four positions we have left to fix next year and have a legitimate chance to be a contender in 08! Unless Randy Moss decides to play. If that happens game over!

 

Kurt, the board is busy just now, if this your idea of sparking some debate as a mod wait until mid May. you are way out of line here, I love our position just now, we are moving in for the kill next season. Hang your head in shame man.

 

That's a very good point about rebuilding. If you'd looked at this team in 2005 you'd have belly-laughed if anybody suggested that we'd be disappointed because we did not catch the Pats in 2007.

We have a rebuilding year and then 2008 to make some progress on the Pats.

 

Wow...this place is the land of negativity, I wish I could prescribre to your theory, vent if you like my friend, there are some people here willing to listen, and even less who have actual opinions and wont just attack you for expressing your emotions. Pay no attention to the small people, only the legit in the know fans, they are around.

 

All that sounds fine but what if we lose our free agents as we do every year we have any? The Jets either won't or can't ever retain them. We kept Cotchery because he was a wideout and not due a big contract. Anybody really good always leaves.

That is my issue with rebuilding or building through the draft. You will never win anything trying to take that approach.

 

At the moment I'm just re-opening all my intake valves on the data we're getting about Tannenbaum and Mangini. Last year I shut em all down and went on blind faith for awhile, even though I knew the Barlow and Ramsey deals were fishy. This year with what I've seen I'm going back into snoop mode and I'm very worried I'm gonna conclude that the current guys are just hackers who got lucky last season.

 

Kurt is an excellent poster - but I disagree somewhat with him. I think the Jets FO is building something the right way. Sure, it's sexy to pick up a Randy Moss, but he's 30 and a problem child. Sure, it's sexy to pick up the "best" FA linebacker, but he's 30 and only started 1 year and is 270 lbs and how long will he play at that level?

The Jets picked up the best CB in the draft, and one of the best ILB's. We've added depth by finding new starters. The DE position is stronger, and we'll have fo find a pass rush. Overall our D should be better in 2007.

Our offense will improve in year 2 of Schotty's regime, and Jones is a real playmaker. I like Smith to improve also at WR. The line is intact, so I see improvement.

Are we Super Bowl contenders in 2007? Maybe maybe not...but the Jets will play good football in 2007 and should make the playoffs as we improve the franchise from the top down.

 

I agree. While I was bitching about the whole Moss mess yesterday, hubby said something that made me think. He said, "Then you just keep them off the field" and "Keep pressure on Brady and counter act". With the pick ups we got on the draft to help our Defense, it's a good possibity. IMO. We all know how Brady hates being pressured, get someone in his face all the time.

To me, football has always been like a chess game between the coaches. I don't think Mangini just threw his hands up and said "I give up, we can't counter what they have." Bullsh*t. I have more faith in this FO than I have in many, many years. In Mangini I trust.

I think I'll wait until pre-season starts and I get to see the weapons Mangini has lined up before I start to panic over what the Patriots are doing.

 

Seriously what has happenened in two days to make you go seemingly nutty. I say that without malice BTW as I think you are a very good poster.

They took flyers on Ramsey and Barlow. What warning signs could you have gleamed from that and ignored? Could it be possible that given the fact that the Jets were woefully short in those two positions that they were decent moves at the time?

They gave up a 4th rounder for a starting RB that had in the past rushed for 1000 yards albeit he did ave some character issues at the time. FYI the Jets had Houston and Blaylock as the starting tandem at the time. LOL that is no LT/Turner combo. Leftovers from the pathetic job Herm/Bradway did at keeping the talent restocked on this team. Barlow was what looked to be an upgrade at the time. Also, Barlow won a game for the Jets in NE and was not a malcontent at all, in fact he was one of Mangini's biggest supporters even though he was not playing regularly.

They also gave up a 6th rounder for Ramsey. Do you you think that this is such a bad move at the time that this FO is now a bunch of schmucks? I see this as such an iconsequential move as to almost mean nothing again MO.

He was a former first round draft pick and starting QB that got mauled and ran for his life in Steve Spurrier's offense. Was that such a glaringly bad move given that Brroks Bollinger was the back up at the time? It was a 6th rounder on the off chance that they can get a quality back up QB that had a good chance of playing given Chad's history of injury. That was certainly worthy of a 6th round pick. Even though Ramsey sucked it still was a good move at the time.

Those two moves were inconsequential, they happened to be poor ones looking back. At the time however they were definitely worthy of a chance given the depth chart at the time.

This draft they gave up the middle of the draft and the extra second rounder. I saw people comparing that to the Giants (Eli Manning), Walker and Ditka debacle's. Those trades are not comparable to this. They are not even close by a longshot. Those trades not only destroyed their teams current drafts but they also ruined the following years drafts. Tannenbaum did nothing of the sort here. He kept 2008 intact. He also did not go for broke on just one solitary player which is a major difference as well.

Fact of the matter is, I would have liked to get more draft picks too. They did however get the best 3-4 ILB in the draft and arguably the top CB that is the most ready to play right away. I know it is impossible to guage drafts the day after and I am not about to say it was an A effort or an F effort. I will say it is not like they gave up the farm to get these guys.

No knock against you but what caused this 180 in just 2 days? It can not be giving up a 4th and 6th on those two or do you feel the draft was that poor?

 

I have a real worry about Tannenbaum. They say he is a "cap wiz". Yet last year we were 20 million over going into preseason. This year we were 15 or 20 or 22 million under depending on what number you believe. We acted in FA as if we were broke again. If he is a wiz then where is all the money? How does NE, Denver and Washington make all the deals they do and we seem to only be interested in the botoom of the barrel retreads?

 

We only had four picks going in, what did people expect we were going to do? Let's see how these guys pan out, I'd never heard of any of them until Saturday, so I can't say I'm thrilled or disappointed. We needed a CB--especially now with Randy Moss in New England--so they moved up to get the best one they could get. Then they added a couple young linemen which you always need more of. Sounds good to me.

 

It's not just the last couple of days. It's the fact that we traded future picks for players that did not last on our roster more than a single season AND then decided to bundle more picks to get a couple of people we really wanted. Depth is key in the NFL and we just kind of pissed on that and moved on.

In free agency we signed not a single impact player, preferring to bring in a bunch of guys who might be good or might turn out to be just another guy.

The Thomas Jones trade was a pretty good trade on the face of it, although without a plan to really upgrade the offensive line it's not clear to me exactly how we expect him to singlehandedly improve our running game next season. We weren't running misdirection all season because we had nobody who could run inside, we were doing it because there were very few holes inside. Not sure how that's going to change this year with no big guard drafted on the first day.

I am left with the distinct feeling based on all of the above that the Jets are being GM'd by a rotisserie guy who is just worried about filling out the 15 guys he needs to pencil in each week and not worried at all about what happens when guys number 9 and 13 are IR'd by the first quarter of the season.

Barlow proved to be no answer at runningback and I think it's pretty clear that Ramsey wouldn't have done much if Chad went down. Trading future draft picks (particularly 4th round picks) for essentially nothing is how you really hurt yourself. It's possible (very possible) that the whole Barlow story would have been different if our offensive line was bulkier last year and capable of drive-blocking in front of him. However doesn't that raise a question as to exactly why you give up the pick needed to improve the line to acquire a guy who needs the improved line? Rotisserie...

I'm hoping that the people defending what the Jets did in this draft are right. They better be or we just lost a year in the process of trying to catch New England.

My grades for the Jets since Tannenbaum and Mangini took over have been in continous decline if you take into account the fact that I gave them a pass last year on a bunch of moves that I am now reconsidering given the additional info.

I really hope that what we saw this offseason is not the standard MO for this front office, because if it is we are already starting wasted time, again.

 

Didn't we use two #1s, including the #4 overall, on the O line last year? They'll upgrade just by not being rookies this year. There's only five positions on the O line and we only had four picks this time, CB was probably a bigger need.

 

I agree that the line has to be better just because they've been together for a full season. I'm worried that they're just too small as a group though and particularly that Kendall is on the cusp of a decline the way Fabini was going into 2005.