There are three units on a football team, not two. The Jets have made it a habit of drafting for all three since Westhoff took the job with the Jets. Occasionally, as in the cases of Brad Smith, Leon Washington, and unfortunately Eric Smith, some of those players primary drafted for the STs unit have skill to produce in the other two units and that is a bonus. McKnight is one of those players who will perform in his primary unit consistently, Special Teams, and show some flashes in another. He's a return man first and a runningback second.
I get this. I don't understand why a team would waste mid-round picks on ST's but I get that they do. ST's for the most part should be late round picks and UDFA's. Spending a 2nd round pick on a kicker or a 4th round pick on a return man is just a waste of precious assets. You may well get a great kicker or return man but how often do NFL championships turn on those two qualities?
I get what you're saying, but special teams has by far the least amount of impact on winning and losing games. Drafting for special teams in the mid rounds just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The difference between McKnight and a back you could land in the 6-7th round or even UDFA is minimal...and especially since every guy we plug in to return kicks generally does well.
So many topics to reply to in this thread, but I'll go with the most recent regarding the KR... I doubt the Jets (or any team for that matter) draft a player solely for KR duties. For argument's sake, in this upcoming season, let's say McKnight scores 4 TDs from within the Offense and 2 TDs in the Special Teams game (I'm not counting on this, but I honestly don't think it's THAT farfetched). What is your opinion of him then? And your opinion of those who evaluated/drafted him?
I can't argue against the Steelers' philosophy; they've been undeniably successful. Having said that, when a team possesses an elite QB, it's much easier to draft BPA/future starters because an elite QB can carry a team, and thus, compensate for other deficiencies and holes that aren't filled immediately.
So what you're saying is that Green Bay has gotten twice as many good picks as the Jets with twice as many picks? I think your analysis is pretty short-sighted and oversimplified here (read: this is not what I usually think of your posts). It seems like you're on Tanny every chance you get. Can't draft talent. Can't retain picks. Relies on contract acumen to get out of sticky situations. Bad system. Decent sounding argument. I think it's absurd. The problem is that the state of the team was a giant piece of shit when Tanny came here. Eric Mangini, are you serious? Herm? Big hill to climb. Tanny has begged borrowed and stolen to put a core of super talented, young players together right from the start. Depth has suffered, but if you don't have the playmakers it doesn't mean anything in this game. Now that he has the nucleus he wants, the next few years are going to be spent filling depth with the draft and taking our best run at the title every year until the core ages and he has to go get some new gems. The rules of the league are exploitable. Tanny took his team's situation, exploited the strategy of going all out for talent, and now he has the talent. Now he'll exploit the talent and work their contracts to bring in as much support for them as he can. This is effective management at its finest, not ineffective flapping around. O LT(boom) C(shacka-la-cka) QB (gulp) WR2(great for position) WR3(solid at position with upside) RBs (Greene/Mcknight cheap average 1-2 punch) LG (good value) RG (hanging in for now) D LE (boi) DT(oi) LILB(yoi) CB1(yoing) CB2(yoing) CB3(yoing) This season we hopefully add long term #1's in the first two rounds of the draft at WR1 and OLB and all of a sudden we're starting to look like a very scary team again. Use the remaining picks to stockpile players where we need them without having to worry about blowing them on RB's and FB's, just the meat and potatoes. Add two much needed competent safeties and maybe a bargain RT/G in free agency and look at that roster. Devastating on defense, very solid on offense. Also quite realistic. Not bad for a team that has been run by non-retards for only five years.
@Boxorox I'm way down on Tanny at this point and for the same reasons I was down on Bradway. He's not doing things that improve the team's structure. He's patching and filling and wasting a lot of value trying to get perfect players when if you evaluate talent properly and just exercise your picks you get those players anyway. I'm tired of watching the Jets on a treadmill and since 2000 the Jets have been on a treadmill with a predictable pattern: make the playoffs a couple of seasons, have an off-season, either bounce back for playoffs or collapse totally. Even if they bounce back for the playoffs they collapse after that. The organizational plan is bad in terms of building a topflight team and I'm tired of watching almost-dids followed by also-rans. I'm 51 years old and I've been watching the Jets for 41 years now and with the exception of 1998 I've never seen a Jets team that had all the elements in place to actually win the damn trophy. Bill Parcells did that in two years coming off of a 4-26 stretch the two years prior. Why does the current FO have no plan to replicate that kind of boost? Why do they have no plan to turn the Jets into an elite team? I'm tired of the dog and pony show that Bradway brought to town and Tannenbaum has continued to sell tickets for. Enough.
The irony of this post is Parcells a) did not really draft all that well for the Jets and b) has a history of leaving teams in a financial mess when he leaves causing them usually do have to rebuild after he's gone and c) took the Jets to one AFC championship game while Tannenbaum/Rex have already gone to two.
Parcells built the second best team in the AFC in a 2 year span with the Jets to earn his way to the AFC Championship game. Rex/Tanny lucked into the playoffs in 2009 and went on a run, had about the 4th best team in the AFC in 2010 but went on a run and then reverted to where the Jets actual talent level is last season. Parcells drafted just fine for the Jets. He got James Farrior (thrown away by Bradway due to the inexplicable decision to switch from a 3-4 to a 4-3 with a roster full of 3-4 players), Randy Thomas, Jason Ferguson, Jason Fabini, Shaun Ellis, John Abraham, Chad Pennington and Laveranues Coles out of 4 drafts with the Jets. That's 2 star caliber players a season over that span. Tannenbaum has drafted Ferguson, Mangold, Revis, Harris and Keller in SIX seasons with the Jets. He hasn't drafted a single star caliber player since 2008. You may not like what Parcells did with the Jets drafts but he left a legacy of NFL talent that greatly profited the Jets over the years. Tannenbaum has basically drafted 4 star caliber players, none since 2007, and a solid starter in Keller.
the assumption that BP didn't draft well is that we had no real day 1 studs to show for those drafts he ran. however he somewhat made up for it in quantity with his dealing of picks to get more picks. but IMO he was average at best with the draft as i cannot seem to forget the studs in dorian boose and scott frost. totally agree with the bradway/edwards reference. unbelievable. thats where the owner should have stepped in. football knowledge or not the continuity gained from keeping that 3-4 would likely have been worth much more to the team.
As much as I liked Herm he was not the right choice to follow Groh. The right choice would have been to keep Groh for a season or two and let Bradway get his feet on the ground and have a free fire for his first coach. This assuming that Groh didn't work out and I kind of liked him too, although I recognize that his approach to the players was better suited to college than to the pros. All of that was upset by the advent of the Rooney Rule, which got Herm his interview, by the great job Herm did of selling himself and selling the Jets to NY, and by Bill Parcells pushing Groh out the door as he left without even considering that the Jets would have been better off with the continuity that Groh represented than with a completely new management team sweeping up his cap mess.
You keep changing your argument. First it was Tannenbaum hasn't done a good job of drafting guys in the middle to late part of the draft that became solid role players, now it's because Parcells has drafted more stars? Since you picked the 4th round as the marking point, look at Parcells record during his 4 drafts: 4 104 Leon Johnson RB North Carolina 5 131 Lamont Burns G East Carolina 5 145 Ray Austin DB Tennessee 6 164 Tim Scharf -- Northwestern 6 191 Chuck Clements QB Houston 7 202 Steve Rosga DB Colorado 7 229 Jason Ferguson DT Georgia 4 111 Jason Fabini T Cincinnati 5 134 Casey Dailey LB Northwestern 5 141 Doug Karczewski G Virginia 5 146 Blake Spence TE Oregon 5 149 Eric Bateman -- Brigham Young 6 163 Eric Ogbogu DE Maryland 6 174 Chris Brazzell WR Angelo State 6 183 Dustin Johnson RB Brigham Young 7 195 Lawrence Hart TE Southern University 4 123 Jason Wiltz DT Nebraska 5 162 Jermaine Jones DB Northwestern State-Louisiana 6 183 Marc Megna LB Richmond 6 197 J.P. Machado G Illinois 7 223 Ryan Young T Kansas State 7 235 J.J. Syvrud LB Jamestown 5 143 Windrell Hayes WR USC 6 179 Tony Scott CB North Carolina State 7 218 Richard Seals -- Utah 4 years, and you've got Ferguson, Fabini and not much else unless you want to count Ryan Young who I don't. So I'll say it again, what constitutes getting value out of the draft? Because at this point you've used two different arguments, each time ignoring that the traded draft picks resulted in better players then we would've gotten at the respective draft slots.
Great post, TCGF. Yeah, I don't get this thread. I understand you don't want to draft guys who are 5th round picks and become 1st round picks because they ran a 4.3, but this thread. And while the Jets have done that sometimes, it's not like we do it all the time. If you never go to the combine, you get guys like Anthony Schlegel in round 3. Or Derrick Strait in round 3. Which is why you criticizing the Jets for taking guys who are "workout warriors" and for taking guys who were good in college and fell further than expected couldn't possibly be any more contradictory. You can't just ignore the mid-late rounds like Tanny has been doing lately and expect to build depth. But you act like Parcells built this great team. Parcells was a phenomenal COACH. He COACHED UP the talent on this team to get as far as he did. As a GM, he was overrated, and that's why the team slowly imploded around him. And you complain about Tannenbaum for lack of depth, how about not having a backup quarterback in 1999? That torpedoed our season. Then thank goodness the Texans arrived and took Marcus Coleman and Aaron Glenn from us or we would have been in total cap hell. And thankfully Keyshawn netted 2 first round picks which helped set us up at QB and at the defensive front 7 for the next couple years. That was a great move by Parcells, can't argue with that, that's one of the best deals in franchise history. But the reason we could never take it to the next level is because Parcells, and then Bradway, simply didn't get enough talented players. Parcells had a piss-poor success percentage on his late picks, while Bradway just was a poor drafter in general. And this is just is wrong. Farrior played outside linebacker with the Jets in the 3-4. He was totally miscast in this role because he was undersized, yet he played there from 1997-2000 with the Jets. Then, in his final year, Herm/Bradway switched to the 4-3, and Farrior exploded as a 4-3 OLB, which better fit his size/speed ratio. Pittsburgh signed him and they moved him back to inside linebacker where he's flourished ever since. The issue with Farrior is that Parcells had no idea how to use him. Then when he was an FA, we weren't sure if he was a contract-year wonder, so we let him walk.
Part of that whole issue is the 6 year term of the previous OC. This is a guy that allows Matt Mulligan to see more snaps than Jeremy Kerley, and asks a QB with Wayne Hunter playing tackle to hold the ball so the two guys he has out in routes can have 3 days to find some imaginary seam. This is also a guy that couldnt find ways to get Leon Washington into open space. I'm going to be very curious what this year brings in that regard...
