What made you think it was PatLeahy? I put as much effort watching it as there was effort in production.
I agree with this, but I think it goes further than that. I think many factors play into this. You're right that both can be defense mechanisms, but it's not always a defense mechanism imo. Some people by nature or by the influence of where they live, the culture of the area, are more skeptical and negative than others and others more positive. Some people always see the glass as half empty, and others always see it half full. Anyone who has been a fan for more than 30 years has seen a lot more bad than good, so one might expect that everyone who has been a fan for over 30 years would be the negative ones, and the younger fans the more positive, but that's not the case at least on this forum. I could be mistaken, but here I think by far the more negative fans are the younger ones. I think some of the most positive fans here are some of the oldest, longest-term Jets fans. IMO this points to the fact that we all have choices that we make all the time. Some just go on autopilot and assume that things are going to be bad, because they have been most of the time. Others choose to take a negative view so as not to be made a fool of (fool me once...) when the Jets do poorly, but then will have a pleasant surprise if the team does well. Some are more neutral, although may be leaning one way or the other. Still others, are more positive, choosing to look for the good, look for reasons to be optimistic. If one wants to see them, I believe there are differences between JD and our previous GMs and there are differences between Saleh and his CS and previous CSs that give reason for hope and optimism. One such thing is the Jets bringing in Beck to work with Zach. They are doing everything they can to help him succeed. LaFleur seems to have learned from his mistakes from earlier this season with his playcalling and being on the sideline instead of the booth. They didn't rush him back when he wasn't 100%. They didn't start him at home vs Miami, and instead are starting him on the road vs the Texans, which should be an easier game. Some fans are more detail-oriented and/or knowledgeable about the team and that can make a difference good or bad over a more casual fan. In addition, some have become more apathetic, either through being burned too many times or as a defense mechanism. JD is the best GM we've had since Weeb Ewbank or perhaps the GM that built the Jets teams of the mid-80s with Klecko, Gastianeau, Lyons, Toon, Walker, McNeil, Hector, Shuler, et al. He has raped other teams in trades. He is taking the right approach of building through the draft. He has acquired extra picks to help the team build faster. He has signed a lot of talent in FA. The fact is that he inherited the worst roster in the NFL, that needed to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch. complete culture change needed to happen. Those kinds of changes and rebuilds don't happen overnight. It took years of bad drafting and bad FA moves to get the roster into such awful shape, and it was always going to take several years to fix it. Some fans are hyper critical and point to the moves that they disagreed with or that didn't work out. The thing is, those attitudes presuppose that GMs never make mistakes and that the best GMs in the league don't make mistakes, but are perfect, and that simply is not true or the case. They all miss on players in the draft and FA. Injuries happen. If a player has had a history of injuries, then he might be more prone to getting injured, but that's not always true. There are players who had somewhat lengthy injury issues in college, who never miss a game in the NFL. There are players who never missed a game with an injury in college, who stay injured all the time in the NFL. There are FAs with injury histories who suddenly stay healty when changing teams. I understand that a lot of the negativity and impatience is a result of frustrations and being tired of all the losing, but being impatient only causes one to make more mistakes and make rash, irrational decisions. We all just need to accept that it's going to take another couple of years for the team to get to where we want it to be, and that's assuming that Wilson will develop into a true FQB and a top 10 QB.
That was hilarious! This board needed some comic relief with the way the season is going. Thanks Brook!.
This is @Brook! a mere poster to some but a drunken GOD to others. EDIT I see you now know who Brook is
Why in hell would anyone be surprised at the negativity here? Have they looked at the record? Have they watched the games?
I think this is a reasonable post, and it echos how I have been trying to feel about things this season, but the coaching keeps getting in the way. We're seeing firsthand why it's not really recommended to have a group rookies rebuilding a team. We now have to experience the rookie growing pains of coaching staff and GM as well as basically the entire team, all the while wondering if those coaches or GM are capable of doing it at a high level at all because, as a rookie, they have never established a pattern of success in their current capacity. That's a lot of points of possible fault, and when you take that many risks, you end up with a lot of failure.
What's really amazing to me is that I thought we hit rock bottom with the Idzik debacle but then we got Mac and Bowles and within a couple of years we hit rock bottom again but *then* we got Gase and JD and bam! instant bottom but ***now*** we have Saleh and JD and the bottom fell out. So as near as I can tell the only thing the Jets are good at now is hitting rock bottom. We've got that one down pat. We're like a bungie jumper with no cord.
First, as part of my Thanksgiving gratitude, I want to say thanks for injecting so much sound reason and humor into the forum this season. I think it has helped keep things on a more even keel. You make very good points in the above post, but did the Jets really have a choice otherwise? They've been trying the competitive rebuild (or been delusional enough to think they had enough talent to compete) for decades and have failed miserably. With the exception of 2009-2010 and 2015, the Jets haven't had anywhere near enough talent or good enough play to have any kind of chance to get to and win a SB. Thanks to Idzik's and Mac's gross incompetence, the roster was practically bare of talent and a large chunk of the cap was being taken by older, expensive FAs. They realistically didn't have enough talent to even think of trying yet another competitive rebuild. In terms of the coaching and CS, what were their options? What great retread HC was out there, available, and willing to take the Jets' HC job? The only potential candidate I can think of was Doug Pederson, and he had just been fired like Gase had been when he was hired. Yes, he had won a SB a few years before, but wouldn't it be akin to hiring Gase, i.e., hiring a failed coach immediately after he was fired and not giving him a year or two to re-think how he did things? I preferred hiring a veteran OC like Brian Daboll, who had proven success in helping develop several quality NFL QBs, but evidently, he and the others (Arthur Smith et al) had negatives, not that much interest in the Jets' job, didn't interview well, or their vision/plan didn't seem right for the team, and Saleh was the consensus top HC candidate. Perhaps with a proven OC, their offense might have been in better shape, but would those former OCs have made good HCs? They might have been able to at least hire a more veteran CS, but that doesn't necessarily guarantee better results than the rookie CS we have. They may have wanted JD to sign more FAs, and start the veterans over the rookies. With the exception of when they hired Weeb Ewbank, the team had never hired the consensus top candidate before for any position, until they hired Joe Douglas. Why shouldn't they have tried that with their HC too? In spite of the confluence of a rookie CS and so many rookies on the team, it seemed like the only reasonable, logical way to go about it. A veteran HC and CS may not have been willing to go with so many rookies and young players starting, and talent-wise, that was really the best and quickest option for the Jets to try to develop a solid, winning team and a new culture. A culture built upon players who love the game, have high character and work ethics, rather than one based upon jaded veterans who were either never that good or on the downside of their careers and who only came to the Jets because of the big payday. As you rightly pointed out, with a rookie CS and so many young players, it's asking for trouble, for struggles and lots of failure. That is even more the case when the team is learning new, more complex systems on both sides fo the ball, so that even the few veterans you have are learning and going through growing pains. That's why the team preached patience. Yes, the PR arm of the team has done that before just to cover their butts, but now it was truly a legitimate request or statement of fact to the fanbase. In spite of its inexperience, the CS was supposed to be adept at communicating and teaching, just the kind you want working with young players/rookies. It has been yet another ugly, brutal season, but we have seen the ability and talent of a number of our young players. Hopefully, there is growth and development occuring both among the young players and within the CS as they learn how to do their jobs better. LaFleur appears to be learning and improving. We can only hope that Saleh and Ulbrich are as well, and that the team will stay healthier, and that filling more holes and upgrading defensive positions in the coming offseason will help lead to a much better 2nd season from this CS and team. If not, we're likely looking at starting over with a CS, and whereas the team will have a lot more talent than it did two years ago, will that talent fit the schemes of the new CS, or will we have to start over talent-wise as well? For certain, if Saleh and his staff fail, our next HC needs to run very similar, if not identical systems, so that we don't have to wind up trading some of the good young talent we have that doesn't fit the new schemes. We all need to hope that Saleh and Ulbrich are learning, or that Saleh will fire Ulbrich and either run the D himself or find someone more capable than Ulbrich.
I think Bowles could’ve succeeded as a head coach in a situation with a better general manager and I think he still has the opportunity to do so as a second time head coach. He seems even-keeled and well liked along with having a decent enough football acumen. He strikes me as the type of guy that learns from his mistakes. It’ll be sad as Jet fans to see him go on to succeed somewhere else.
You're right, and that's why, prior to the hiring of Saleh & Co. I advocated for hiring someone with actual HC'ing experience, at least at the major college level. But that requires a pool of such candidates who would be eager to be HC of the Jets. Maybe there was such a pool, and there were qualified candidates with HC'ing experience who wanted to be HC of the Jets, but we don't know that. In that light, considering Saleh became acceptable to me - in fact, more desirable than the candidates I was aware of being available and wanting to work for the Jets. But coming to that acceptance also required me to accept that this was in fact going to be an entire "build from scratch" process. That wasn't something I really wanted given my age and the possibility that I might live to see it bear fruit, but I absolutely preferred that path over sticking with Gase and that shitshow. I admit I was more optimistic than I should've been before the season started - not only with Saleh but also with Wilson - but they did suffer some huge injuries that had an impact on everything too. Given all the above, I still have hope that this will work out better than anything we've seen for decades. But, I've been wrong before.
