When Abraham was drafted by the Jets he was a 3rd down fringe pass rusher. Now he's a top 10 defensive end who is through the offensive line constantly and has also become a legitimate run stopper. Shawn Ellis was terrible for a long time. Then after realizing their mistake and moving him back to defensive end he took off and went for 10 sack for 2 seasons in a row. If you honestly believe that coaching had nothing to do with that, you're crazy. Herm and Co cleared out the slow old LBs after the 2003 season when it became apparent that they were no longer viable options as starters. Why would they tear apart a playoff team after the '01 or '02 seasons? James Farrior did absolutely nothing for 4 years with the Jets before Herm Edwards became coach. In 2001 he set a career high in tackles with 142 and then signed with the Steelers. How is Farrior's failure with the Jets Herms fault at all, when his only season with Farrior was Farrior's best? I give Herm some credit for Vilma as well. Any time a rookie plays as well as Vilma did I give the coaching staff some credit (Sutton and Henderson also deserve credit, as well as Vilma himself.)
Sorry junc, "backing in" to the playoffs after x amount of mathematical formulas are implemented doesn't count for anything (as we saw in a few of the playoff years). He sucked by being part of a hierarchy that insisted upon playing aging vets instead of promising youth. He sucked by being a soft coach, who easily rolled over when players pushed his buttons (see Ty Law). He sucked by being a pushover and running training camp like it was "fairy camp." Call him what you will, I call him a preacher and a barker at the carnival, not a quality head coach. Let's see how he runs KC into the ground within the next couple of seasons.
Abraham, Ellis, Coles, Jones, Moore, Vilma, Hobson, Coleman, Rhodes--all those players played while they were "promising youth" under Herm. He played the players who deserved to be played.
Abe's best year as a Jet came in Herm's first year as HC. Abe never had more sacks and tackles than he did in his second NFL year. Ellis was held back by Herm trying to move him inside. Herm was obsessed with running the Tampa Bay D which included the cover 2 plus a Warren Sapp clone. Ellis was not Warren Sapp and the experiment wrecked Ellis and cost Fat Teddy his job. Herm was so obsessed with running the Tampa Bay D he signed that waste Robinson and gave up 2 picks to move up and get "Baby Sapp" As far as the old slow LB, Herm and Bradway made a decission to keep both Lewis and Jones over both Glenn and Marcus Coleman in the expansion draft for cap reasons. They could have kept Coleman and let either Lewis or Jones go. Why they chose two over paid, old and slow LB stay and let a young CB/S leave is still a question to me. My only guess is Herm was obsessed with starting his guys and bringing in Abraham and Lynch and he felt that the veterans were the way to go at LB. Robinson and Abraham were both bad to mediocre at best and his boy Lynch decided Herm wasn't good enough to win the big one and went with Shanahan. You have to realize Herm took over a great roster in 01 that was ready to win. Vinny held the team back do to his injury which he never fully recovered from but the Jets had allready taken care of the QB problem for Herm by drafting Pennington, Herm just didn't get it and would have let him rot on the bench if Vinny hadn't played himself off of the team.
There's no such thing as backing in to the playoffs, you either win the games you need to win or you don't.
First off why would we have wanted to keep Coleman when he was terrible? Secondly we were in cap hell(ALOT worse than what we were supposedly in this year) and the FO made a BRILLIANT move giving Hou Ryan Young and in for that they agreed to take the high salaries of Coleman and Glenn. Sure we would have liked to have kept Glenn but it had to be done and we were much better off for it. those guys are like family, you don't think maybe Herm said to him he might not be there that much longer? of course he did or he would have signed here. :lol: "Great"? Come on. We had talent but if it wa so great why couldn't they even make the playoffs the last 2 years before Herm came here? You'd think this "great" roster would have won more than 1 playoff game since 1987. If the roster was truly "great" not 1 of the 3 coaches who walked out on us would have left. Chad was hurt in 2000 and was on his 3rd system in 3 years in 2001. It was wise to go w/ Vinny. I would have started Vinny week 1 in '02 BUT I would ahve been wrong b/c if he startd that soon he would have been eaten up w/ all our injuries, Vinny took the fall for that start which Chad would have even though it wasn't b/c of QB play. They did a GREAT job w/ Chad.
Oh, come on. It was Herm who moved him to 3T in the first place, an experiment that failed miserably and set Ellis's development back an entire year. That's not coaching? Right.
Also Ellis had 9 sacks his first year. That's pretty damn impressive for 3-4 rookie DE. Herm ruined him for 2 years.
He had 8.5 and hit the rookie wall hard as he had 5 in the 1st 7 games then, much like the team, faded down the stretch w/ just 3.5 in the last 9 games. I do think herm gets some blame for '01 but not for '02. he set him back a year and was trying to do something to help the tam after Ferg got hurt. It was the wrong move attempted for the right reasons.
Coleman had a great stretch in '99 which is shy we signed him after that season but other than that he was terrible. He was a tremendous athlete and had all the tools which made him so frustrating to watch. Tanked? yeah herm told him we are going to lose half the team to injuries next year and I'll be gone so don't sign here He didn't tank anything but probably felt like he would be gone w/in a year or 2. But the roster was "great" so why would BP, BB and AG walk away? BP wanted 1 more SB why would he walk away? BB needed to have success in his 2nd job and if he had a "great" rsoter why would he walk away? It took groh 20+ years to get a HC job- why would he leave w/ a "great" roster in place?
I can't comment on thsoe years as I didn't see him play and stats don't measure up for DBs but I know he sucked here and was not missed once he was gone. We had some older, beat up players and it's not like he was running a Parcells camp in '04. I'd rather we start slow and finish strong than the opposite. In 3 years here Mr. tough camp Pacrells started 1-2, 0-2 and 1-6. Please, Parcells had TWO chances to coach the team. After '99 then he could have been the saviour after '00 when Groh stepped down and he wanted no part of it but curiously he wanted the TB job the next year. If he thought we had "great" talent he'd have either never left or been back for '01. BB didn't have the luxury to just go for the money- he NEEDED to have success or his HC career could have been over. He was paid extremly well here as an assistant and would have been as a HC and would have been an even bigger God here if he led us to 3 SBs.
