Was looking at the Jets depth chart again last night and I realized that there's a parallel to the current situation the Jets have on the DL and it's a homegrown parallel. In 2001 the Jets had one of the best offensive lines in football, maybe the best. From tackle to tackle the Jets lineup was Jason Fabini, Kerry Jenkins, Kevin Mawae, Randy Thomas and Ryan Young. The Jets rushed for 2,054 yards that year at 4.6 yards per carry and they gave up just 19 sacks in 485 drop backs by the QB, a 3.9% sack rate that was second in the NFL and a full 3% below the league average. That off-season the Jets lost Kerry Jenkins to free agency because they were cap strung and he was a 28 year old guard and they thought they had bigger priorities. Jenkins was a UDFA and he was looking for some real money on his second deal. The Bucs signed him for $10M over 5 years with a $2.6M bonus, which was pricey for a veteran LG in the economics of 2001 unless the guy was a pro bowler. In 2002 the Jets started slowly, with J.P Machado playing LG after the guy signed to fill the gap, 35 year old Dave Szott got hurt in training camp. Szott had been signed for 3 years and $4.2M, a substantial savings over what the Jets would have paid Jenkins if they tried to retain him once he hit free agency. However he was 35 and guys that age are particularly susceptible to injuries and declining play. The Jets rushing totals declined to 1,618 yards in 2002. They got just 4 yards a carry. Their sacks rose to 32 and a 6.2% pace, which was just below the NFL average that year. Curtis Martin was injured early in the year with ankle problems but played through the injury. His backup Lamont Jordan wasn't hurt and registered the lowest yards per carry of his Jets career at 3.8 yards per carry. The Jets had a late run and made the playoffs and won a blowout playoff game against the Colts and everything seemed fine, even with the drop off in key indicators for the Jets line play. The thing the Jets didn't manage to do during the season was to get their fine young RG, Randy Thomas locked down to a new deal before his old one expired. Thomas was looking for a big deal. He was a 2nd round pick and the buzz around him was fairly strong 4 years into his NFL career. The Jets cap wasn't really the culprit this time around. They'd managed to dump a huge chunk of the overhead from the Parcells era when they made a deal to get the Texans to take Aaron Glenn and Marcus Coleman in the expansion draft. The price was a very reasonably priced Ryan Young at RT. The Jets had little hope of resigning Thomas when he hit free agency and the Redskins signed him to a 7 year deal at $28M with a $7M signing bonus 3 days in. In 2003 the Jets rushed for 1,635 yards at 4 yards per carry. They were sacked at a 5.9% rate and tellingly Chad Pennington's sack rate was much higher at 7.8%. Chad was injured in the pre-season as the Jets were trying out Randy Thomas replacement Brent Smith, a converted tackle, when Chad went down. The Jets went from a strong rushing attack in 2001 to a mediocre one in 2002 and 2003. They went from a very protective pocket in 2001, one of the best in the NFL, to average protection in 2002 and 2003. They lost the franchise QB opportunity with Chad Pennington in the process. Why? Because they ignored the glue guys on the offensive line and treated them like they were replaceable. Snacks is a glue guy on the Jets defense right now. He's one of the primary reasons the Jets have the best run defense in the NFL. If the Jets let him get to free agency at the end of the year the odds are excellent that somebody will pry him away at a figure the Jets don't want to match. The odds are pretty good the Jets run defense will decline after that happens. Couple this with Mo Wilk's situation and it seems like it's a no-brainer to reach an accommodation with Snacks now, before the market sets his price above what the Jets can afford. It's a Kerry Jenkins and Randy Thomas-like situation. Yes, they wanted more than the Jets were willing to pay but the offense became almost immediately unstable after Jenkins departure and it did not re-stabilize until Brandon Moore came out of nowhere to solidify things in 2004. The hole at LG has been there repeatedly for the Jets since Jenkins left. Glue is important. It's what holds things together.
The Jets have repeatedly signed veteran offensive linemen to fill the holes that the departure of homegrown talent have created. This isn't always a bargain basement thing. Alan Faneca got a huge contract to come in and stabilize LG for a couple of seasons after the Jets were unable to find a replacement for Pete Kendall, who was brought in to stabilize LG after the Jenkins-Machado-Szott fiasco that effectively killed Chad Pennington's career with the Jets. The Jets treat the offensive line like it's individual players doing their thing and they do a lot of mixing and matching from year to year. I believe this is one of the reasons that D'brickashaw Ferguson has never reached his full potential. He's playing with different guys next to him almost every year. That makes him a guy on an island and his play goes up and down year by year depending on what adjustments he has to make to cover for the guy next to him. Nick Mangold is so good that he manages to maintain the elite play despite often having two semi-shaky guys on each side of him. Like Kevin Mawae before him he has allowed the Jets to play fast and loose with the offensive line with only occasional collapses occurring.
glue guys are important to a degree but you need to ask yourself how big of a dropoff would their replacement be? how big of a weakness would their departure leave to hide? you look at it as a trade off. In the case of your example above letting Jenkins go for that type of money was a damn good decision. Not only did he play a position where they could mask the weakness (guard) but he also wasn't worth that type of money. Randy Thomas hurt more because he was the better player but you don't sacrifice elite talent for a glue guy like him. They had an elite RB with tremendous vision to find holes, they could afford to work in new guys on the line. If Pennington had not been made of glass and made the next step like we all thought he would - squabbling over a little bit of ypc would look silly. With Damon Harrison, obviously his departure is going to be felt to a degree. But you don't sacrifice elite players elsewhere for ~0.2 to 0.4 yards per carry. Especially when you already have talented defensive linemen and whoever his replacement is, isn't going to be that much of a drop off. in 2016/2017 you might be able to make this post, saying the Jets went from 3.8 ypc defensively to 4.0 ypc and I'm going to say.. so what? Harrison is going to command a lot of money, but he's a glue guy like you say, not an elite player. if the Jets were smart they'd trade him now. teams don't win with glue guys. They can be picked up. Teams win when they have top talent. So I don't necessarily disagree with you, as all things considered I would like to hang onto glue guys, but if its going to mean you lose top talent elsewhere, or you can come relatively close to their production with their replacement, you let them walk.
I agree with you regarding Snacks. Basically a good post, but if you're saying the Jets could have re-signed both Kerry Jenkins and Randy Thomas, I think that you're mistaken, but I could be wrong. They possibly could have kept Jenkins, as my memory is very fuzzy on him, but I clearly remember Thomas' salary demands being outrageous and there was no way the Jets could have paid him what he was demanding. Not only would it have destroyed the team's salary structure, but I don't think they had room under the cap. They would have had to cut at least a couple of players in order to re-sign him. He was being Revis before Revis and demanding a ton of money for what at that time was still not a premium position. The fact that the Jets couldn't or at least may have not been able to re-sign either or both is due to Parcells and Tanny's cap mismanagement imo.
You speak as if the Jets have had consistency of having the same GMs and CS for 20 years, and we all know that isn't the case. During that time we've had at least Bradway, Parcells, Tanny, Idzik and now Maccagnan as GMs. We've had changes in the scouting dept. We've had a change in ownership. We're on our 6th HC, I think, with no telling how many different OL coaches and OCs we've had and resulting changes in philosophies, blocking schemes, and priorities. I also disagree with you regarding Brick. I never wanted him in the first place. I never thought he was that good. I totally believe that we have seen the best that Brick had to offer. He was never a good run-blocking OL and still isn't. He has the speed and agility to get to the 2nd level, and for all his yoga, kung fu or whatever, he has never seemed to have the power/strength or maybe the desire to knock his opposing DL off his pins and open up a big hole. He's been a very good pass blocker and taken care of himself, and been lucky so that he has avoided injury, but I will not shed one tear when he retires or is released and the Jets have his replacement in hand.
None of those olinemen had the talent that Mo and Sheldon have though. Maybe Mawae just as a dominating force but the talent level is different. I'd argue that Snacks is looked at the way he is mostly because of the attention that teams have to pay to 91 and 96. Maybe we'll see in the first 4 games of there is any drop off.
True, but he retired due to injury, didn't he? He didn't go to another team because the Jets refused to pay him what he wanted.
Im just saying it usually take a different type of talent to be a dlineman. Dlineman need to be big , strong and fast..olineman just have to be big and strong. Quickness is a bonus but not a necessity. To me you can be crafty and disguise a d-line if one of your best guys were to go down , if your best olineman goes down its usually big trouble.
It may have been his best chance to continue playing, but wasn't the injury considered pretty much a career-ender for him? I think I remember his saying that he was done, that he had lost the desire to try to fight through, do all the hard work to rehab and then play another year.
Regardless they did not find a sufficient replacement. Wayne Hunter was horrible and legitimately cost us games with his play in 2011. Also I'll never forget how he tipped off a play during that goal line stand at PIT in the AFC title game, he crept up in a two point stance seemingly to get a better jump off the snap into pass protect, Lamar Woodley saw it, dropped back and deflected the slant for Cotchery. My fuckin Christ Wayne. WTF.
that's why it's important to have a good mix of vets, prime guys, and rookies on each squad. You only have to replace one guy every other season while the other 4 or 5 keep the thing going strong. Having 5 guys in their prime or 5 vets all looking for a big contract at the same time with no one behind them is when things fall apart. Our d-line could be hitting that point pretty soon, which makes the Leonard Williams rookie signing brilliant.
You're still so hung up on the fact that if a tackle is a good blocker that he needs to a 340 pound mauler. He's not an elite tackle, but certainly has remained a top 10 left tackle throughout his tenure in the NFL, perhaps slightly below that last year. He's always been an elite pass blocker, and a good run blocker. I'm not going to get into the logistics and techniques of offensive line blocking because you're uninterested in hearing about them. I will say, that blocking is just as much about turning guys away from the run as it is blowing them off the line ten yards back or pancaking them (which is really a rarity).
Kerry Jenkins was a glue guy. Snacks and Randy Thomas is / was pro bowl talent and a core part of the team.
I think Snacks is a glue guy that can eventually be replaced. If he wants to be a core part of the team, I need to see more sacks from Snacks. Or at least more pass rush on passing downs.
