This is absolutely true but it's also water under the bridge at this point. You don't get do-overs and Sanchez is already toast in NY. In order for the Jets to salvage Sanchez right now they'd have to be in position to sign somebody like Greg Jennings to come in and take the 1 slot opposite Holmes and they'd also have to draft a G or T early and probably a RB also. Maybe even going with a TE like Sims in the 3rd or 4th after doing all of that. The only chance the Jets have to save Sanchez at this point is to treat him like a rookie Peyton Manning and just throw so much more effort into giving him tools that if he fails it's all on him. No more excuses, just him. When Peyton Manning was a rookie he had Marshall Faulk standing behind him in the backfield. He had Marvin Harrison at FL, He had two rookie WR's drafted right behind him. The Colts drafted two offensive linemen that year. The next year they took Edgerrin James on the 4 pick to replace the departing Faulk. They took another G in the 3rd round. After his 3rd season they took Reggie Wayne in the 1st and Ryan Diem in the 4th. After his 5th season they took Dallas Clark in the 1st. The Colts just kept throwing talent at Manning and saying "it's all on you, make it work" And he did. In Sanchez 1st season the Jets drafted Shonn Greene in the 3rd round to go along with Thomas Jones and Leon Washington, they were loaded in the backfield. They drafted Matt Slauson in the 6th round to sit behind the best line in the NFL. They traded for Braylon Edwards to give Sanchez a #1 WR. After 2009 they lost Jones and Washington and signed a great player at the end of his career in LT. They lost Faneca and replaced him with Slauson. In 2010 they took a flyer in the 2nd on Vlad Ducasse who has not worked out. They drafted McKnight in the 4th and he's been almost invisible on offense. They took John Connor in the 5th. They traded for Santonio Holmes to give Sanchez 3 good receivers to throw too in Cotchery, Edwards and Holmes. After 2010 they lost Damien Woody and replaced him with Wayne Hunter. They lost Cotchery and Edwards and replaced them with a couple of aging mercs who would provide no continuity moving forward for Sanchez even if they worked out. In 2011 they drafted Bilal Powell in the 4th and Jeremy Kerley in the 5th. They signed two free agent WR's at the end of their careers in Plax and Mason. After 2011 they lost LT and the two mercs who hadn't worked out (Mason was actually cut during the season). The way the Jets have treated the grooming of Mark Sanchez to be a franchise QB is a joke. They were playing Madden Football with him, mixing and matching to try to find guys who were better than the last guys. They were doing all of this in a cap environment that was slanting against them and without putting any emphasis on getting guys to help him through the draft. If the Jets really wanted Sanchez to get over the top they spend the 1st round pick in 2010 on the offensive side of the ball and then several after that also to make up for the fact they were so short on picks. They spend more early picks in 2011 or 2012 to make sure. they put it all on him. The impression that is out there is that Sanchez was coddled. Well if having "gimme the ball" guys acquired in trades is coddling I guess so.
Well how come the Jets didn't do that from the start? The Jets wanted Sanchez to be their "Manning" or "Brady". Sanchez supporters, Sanchez haters need to put that in retrospect.
Absolutely not. This is his chance to succeed. As I said MM is a proven talent. Shitty and Sparano were not.
Jim Mora was the head coach in Indy when Peyton was taken. He understood that you needed to overload talent around the QB for success. When Marshall Faulk, another very high pick who had been the focus of the offense pre-Manning, began to subtly undermine Manning in the Colts locker room the Colts traded him in a hurry. This is similar to the Giants making it clear that Tiki Barber was not the main act with Eli on the roster, a move that caused Barber to retire at his peak. Bill Polian was the GM and he knew that the Colts were going to live and die with Manning. He did everything that was possible to make the results positive. He did take a draft off in 2000 to focus on the defense after Manning had his feet firmly planted on the ground. He did this because Mora didn't think the Colts could win in the playoffs without dramatically improving the defense.
Are you shitting me with this? Sanchez was brought onto a winning team with the No 1 D in the league, and established OL and running game, a first round pick at TE and was asked to manage the position. He wasn't drafted to be the next great NFL QB. Manning was brought into a team that sucked in virtual all facets with the exception of Faulk and he was drafted with the thinking that he was the next great NFL QB. Sanchez comming out was never thought about like that this is an undersized guy with a slow delivery and reasonable mid range arm. He was never thought of as the next Dan Marino or Payton Manning and he was brought into a great situation where he wasn't asked to be the next Payton Manning. He was brought in to be the next Jeff Hostletler instead he looks very much like the next Joey Harrington. Sanchez has had everything and he has been mostly below average with the exception of 2 games, his first start ever and NE playoffs in 2010. He has outright sucked in many of his starts and the more the team has asked of him the less he has produced. This guy is mediocre when surrounded by great talent and outright bad when asked to lead.
You're missing the point. When did Sanchez career go south? In 2011 when the Jets expected him to be Peyton Manning or Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers. When they announced they were putting it on his shoulders and going to a passing game. If the Jets had kept the talent level around him very high and kept the expectations on him within bounds he probably doesn't deep six the way he did. He's still not a great QB but the Jets are definitely a better team with a deep talented roster and a game managing QB than they've been with a thin roster absent playmakers and a game managing QB asked to be the man. What the Jets did was to train him to be a game manager and then yank all the talent away as it aged out and was not adequately replaced. Then they demanded that he be the man.
They wanted the best of both worlds, letting the rookie learn slowly while fielding a competitive team with top talent, then telling the young QB to carry the team as the talent around him diminished. Sanchez, didn't sit and learn for years, he wasn't allowed to learn by trial and error, he wasn't asked to keep on being a game manager after he tried to do that the first two years. Obviously hindsight is 20/20, but basically BAL did the same thing except did it right (and Flacco is a better QB for about 2 years now). They just kept on letting Flacco manage games, not really expecting much from him, then Flacco went on a tear the last 4 games of the season. Maybe Flacco just got hot, maybe he made a jump, but he definitely hasn't put together 4 games in a row like that ever in his career. At the same time, the team around Flacco was changing for better or for worse and he was going along not ever making a jump from year to year but steadily and slowly improving. They never asked Flacco to carry the team but eventually he did it in the playoffs and has been a strength for them overall the last 2-3 years. That should have been the plan for Sanchez. Now obviously they are different QBs, but BAL took the slow approach while staying competitive, while we tried to take the slow approach for two years and then "carry our team" approach the next two years . If you are going to start with "carry our team" then you need to let the QB chuck it up and down the field and not worry about making the playoffs.
And how long did that take exactly? We have the opposite situation here. Draft. wCO RB, and a couple of OLBs, (trading out of the nine, trading Revis getting a low first round an extra two or three, adding youth and speed, and someone that mirrors Westbrooks ability, and you're where you want to be. Hill, Holmes,Edwards,Kerley, and a late round flyer are good at WR, Keller goes, with a back to stretch the field laterally, the combo of Kerley and Cumberland can work the middle, Holmes is a plus, and Hill and/or Edwards can get down the outside. All you need is Nacho to deliver the ball quickly, and a young RB buys that extra half second.
Yeah. I don't know how you got that from my post. I said the talent diminished and we asked Sanchez to do something different from his first two years. BAL had it correct. Keep on plugging the team along and not asking your QB to do much. If you win like that great, if your QB starts being the main strength of your team, even better.
Not in 2011 he went South down the stretch in 2011. The Jets were 8 and 5 and Sanchez had 7 INT's in the last 3 games all losses. The guy was the prime reason we didn't make the playoffs in 2011 in a pretty crappy division.
That was the worst part of it. You could overcome his TOs up to that point since he was throwing for a ton of TDs, then down the stretch the TDs (outside of garbage time) disappeared while the TOs stayed. On top of that, we had a supposed "clutch" QB from the year before choke big time for us.
It was all through 2011, although he looked better in some games early on than he did at the end. He had 6 TD passes and 4 Int's before Mangold got hurt. After that he had 20 TD passes and 14 Int's. Basically he wasn't capable of doing the high-flying passing attack thing at a high level before Mangold got hurt and then it totally broke down when Baxter was at center, never to recover even after Mangold came back. It's really hard to be the guy that the entire team leans on in the passing attack. There are only about a half-dozen guys like that in the NFL at this point and Sanchez was likely never going to be one of them but certainly not with average WR's and a weak line.
Baltimore just has a stronger talent base than the Jets and that was true even in 2009 and 2010. Flacco was never the focal point of that team until this last season when he suddenly flared up and took them for a ride.
He did struggle late but so did the D and the main reason we missed was b/c of the D struggling whether it was not giving us a ahcance in both NE games, the oak game or allowing dagger drives like Den 95 yds, Miami 13 mins 20+ plays or Eli to Cruz for 99 yds. If our D is like '09 or '10 we easily make the playoffs in 2011.
So Miami driving 13 mins 20+ plays on the D is more crippling than Sanchez throwing 2 picks to the same D-lineman and then a linebacker who is now washing dirty towels somewhere?
Not to pile on Sanchez here (heh), but I think it needs saying it was not totally unreasonable for the Jets to think Sanchez should improve in his third year. Sure, not all NFL Qb's do, but he had been coddled for his first two years, and should have known the system by his third year well enough to at least improve his completion percentage. And not to defend the FO further, but at the time many felt it was an acceptable strategy at receiver to not keep both Edwards and Holmes, and to then replace Edwards with Burress. The fact that Edwards was soon seen as demanding too much money from the Jets (since he eventually signed for far less) was also seen as vindication for the approach of the FO. The problem with the strategy was that Burress had no speed by the time he got back, but of course Woody wanted to sign Burress to make the Giants look bad. No doubt in hindsight the FO did not improve the cast around Muck in that off season, but I am saying it was not so obvious at the time, and does not in any event excuse his crap performance down the stretch, when Mangold was back, and even Burress was putting up some decent numbers despite his lack of production between the twenties. It seemed like a reasonable approach at the time to expect more out of your Qb who was in his third year, had the big contract, and was the fifth overall pick in the draft. Of course it didn't work out, but the implication that the whole approach was based on faulty thinking, and THAT was why Muck failed, is not accurate or fair.
Absolutely, we had the lead against a bad offense. We are a D first team, when the D fails it's more rattling to the team.
I'm not saying the talent on offense in 2011 was great, but it wasn't as terrible as some make it seem. Burress made big plays at points during the season, Holmes, Keller, Kerley emerged as a solid slot receiver and Keller at TE, with Greene and LT in the backfield.
