Your posts about Pennington, and his fans, are simply deranged. No one could possibly believe what you write. Either you post to provoke, or Pennington has somehow caused you to lose your mind.
The schedules are done a year in advance. I wish people wold stop saying this crap. With the exception of 2 games, the schedule is already locked. The 4-12 Jets were awarded these games. I bolded the out of division games that are on paper tough. Here is 2009: HOME Jacksonville Tennessee Atlanta Carolina AFC North AWAY Houston Indianapolis New Orleans Tampa Bay AFC West
You mean the position coaches? I have to strongly disagree. Look at someone like Bryan Cox. He's our D-Line coach. What has he done since October to inspire any confidence at all? And don't tell me it is the schemes. Cox was a hot-tempered vocal guy. I don't see a single Jet D-lineman look motivated or fired up all year, and that has nothing to do with schemes or execution. From what I can tell, Bryan Cox couldn't motivate a bunch of frat boys to get into a hot tub filled with Penthouse Pets. Someone else should look at the qualifications of the guy Mangini has working as our QB coach...
Maybe we aren't that good and played over our heads in the Titans game. But we are still better than the Seahawks and better than the 49ers. Shouldn't lose those games. The lack of consistency with this team is just hard to understand. Mangini's first year we had a weak schedule too. We took advantage of it. We were who we were, basically played at the same level every week, and because of the schedule it was good enough to win 10 games. I'd say 14 of the 16 games went as you'd expect them too. Shouldn't have beat NE, shouldn't have lost to the Browns, but the rest of the year we basically beat who we should beat and lost to who we should lose too. This year, you can't figure this team out. We play very well in our division, the 2nd or 3rd best division in football. Then we play the 2 worst divisions in football and go 3-5. We aren't as good as people thought we were a few weeks ago. But we should be good enough to go 4-0 against the NFC West, and at least 3-1 against the AFC West.
If the Jets couldn't get over the top this year with the talent level on the team, and it was a better than average team - far more talented than the Dolphins for example, why would anybody think that next year's team is going to improve on these results? Favre is not going to be better next year at 40 than he was this year at 39, even assuming that he's coming back, the process of discovering the aforementioned likely to drag out forever and harm the team more than it helps it whatever he decides to do in the end. Does anybody think Mangini can develope one of the young QB's on the roster given Favre's long shadow and Mangini's proven ability to get less out of a QB (Chad's 2006 in retrospect was his worst full season by quite a bit) than you'd expect? I watched this team all year and couldn't figure out what was going on with them. They looked great at times, they looked terrible at times (often in the same game with halftime switching them from great to terrible) and they looked just average at times. They were in the top 3 in sacks for quite awhile (they're STILL tied for 6th if you'd believe it) with no discernible pass rush and no incessant blitz patterns. They lead the NFL in rushing efficiency for weeks at a time without ever grinding a win out against a far inferior team just by running all over them. They had a great run defense for a large part of the season, while still allowing an above average number of points (which just makes no sense at all if you think about it). Basically the Jets were like an enormous conundrum with none of the stats leading to the conclusions you'd expect them to lead to. Good stats produced inferior results. Weak looking play on the field produced great stats. None of this made sense. Then I realized that I'd kind of seen this before. What the Jets really look like more than anything else is the New Orleans Saints in 2002. The Saints in 2002 under Jim Haslett managed to beat Tampa Bay twice (12-4, eventual Super Bowl Champion), Green Bay (12-4), Pittsburgh (10-5-1) and San Francisco (10-6) on their way to a 9-7 season with no playoffs. Why? Because they lost to Detroit (2-14), Cincinnati (3-13) and Minnesota (6-10). They lost 3 in a row at the end of the season to miss the playoffs by 1 game. Haslett coached them for 3 more seasons but he never got over the top with them. He was fired when they collapsed in 2005. He, like Eric Mangini, had taken over the Saints after a disastrous collapse under Mike Ditka and lead them to 10-6 and the playoffs his first season, a result he never achieved again.
I put 2 seconds of thought into this and I got a bunch of shit: 1. Next years roster will have more talent, not less. 2. We won 9 games (at least/so far) this year with this same talent. 3. Players have another year in the system. 4. Coaches have a little bit more experience under their belt. 5. Maturation of young players. And this isn't even considering any potential decline in other teams due to various reasons. Also...what do you mean by over the top this year? Surely you of all posters didn't expect to see a magical jump into elite status just like that, right? I mean, you're the guy still trying to tell everyone that Revis/Harris was a mistake. Now you're saying that this team has performed below your expectations? 1. "They looked great at times, they looked terrible at times..." can be used to describe....yea just about every team in the NFL. 2. Thanks for another reason why they might/should improve next year. 3rd in sacks for a while, one of the tops against this run in a while, and both our pass rushers and hopefully our DL's should get more talented in one way or another. 3. Sounds like a young team going through the ups and downs of trying to feel each other and the systems they're in around and get comfortable while trying to compete at the same time to me. I'm crazy though, so...yah. 4. I assume that my post above will get twisted into "there's nothing wrong" by someone. Enjoy that. This whole vicious cycle of thought is getting a little stale. I actually like that comparison to Haslett you made. I've even played with that one in my head. My problem in your analysis comes from the fact that you've already seemed to imply that Mangini will pretty much go the way of Haslett in NO without actually seeing what happens. Whats that thing about assuming...
