Prepare to be shocked. Mike Florio went out of his way to take a swipe at the Jets!!! Based on the Jets saying thank you to Thomas Jones in a KC paper, Florio has gotten a quote from a league source to for the express purpose of bashing the Jets.

Said a league source in response, “If this guy is all the things they’re saying, why didn’t they keep him?”

It’s a great question.

The source believes that if the Jets believed what they said in the ad, they would have kept Jones. The source also believes that the ad represents an effort by the Jets to defuse a potentially volatile situation.

The locker room is loyal to Jones, and players are still upset, we’re told, by the decision to dump him. The locker room also might not be thrilled about the decision to pay LaDainian Tomlinson even more money than the Chiefs paid to Jones.

“Anytime [G.M. Mike] Tannenbaum feels the heat,” the source opined, “he reacts like this. . . . Do you think Jones cares about this [ad]? How do you think he feels about the fact that the paid Tomlinson more money than Jones got in Kansas City?”

…

So spare us the P.R. ploys. The Jets made a bad decision by getting rid of Jones, they’ve arguably compounded it by signing Tomlinson, and the respective performances of the two players and their teams suddenly has become an interesting story line for the 2010 NFL season.

They publicly said thank you. Wow, what jerks.

“The locker room” also needs to hire an accountant, because last I checked $5.8 million is more than $3.0 million. Or do they not teach players that when tutors are writing their papers for them in college?

The locker room loves Thomas, but would they love him as much if he was dragging the team down? I don’t think so.

No one’s saying it’s easy, but let’s face it, Jones sucked at the end of last season, and he didn’t want to be marginalized, and he didn’t want to take less money. Now is Jones worth the $3 million more than LT? Maybe. but in a reduced role, it’s pretty irrelevant.

If the Jets win, the locker room will get over it quickly. Calling LT a “compounding” of the problem is premature. In my opinion, Florio is one of the worst predictive on-field analysts I have ever seen , which is why he stays away from it like the plague. The man thought Laveranues was going to be the Bengals savior last season. How’d that end?

I just ran some quick numbers, which if I am doing this, then that’s a clear indication of how mad I am. Last year, the Jets ran for an eye-popping 2650 yards with runners not named Mark Sanchez (still tops in the league without the QB). Where I think people fail is thinking that Thomas Jones is being removed from the situation and LT is coming in as a 1:1 replacement.

Those people are idiots.

At most, it’s a half replacement, more like a third with Shonn Greene taking the mantle as top dog.

Let’s look at 2009 how the team stacked up.

While Leon went down, initially Thomas Jones stepped up his carries, and then Shonn Greene did as well. While these numbers were respectable from a average yards per carry perspective, Brad Smith took a larger role when he needed to to mix it up as Leon once did, and came through for the offense running the Wildcat a number of times.

So, let’s assume the wheels come off the running game, but everyone stays healthy. Imagine Shonn Greene can’t get the push he needs, so his average drops from 5.0 to 4.0. Imagine LaDainian is an utter embarrassment, but the team keeps calling him about seven times a game to run the ball. Imagine, even if Leon is healthy enough to play, he’s just not as productive as he’s ever been for the Jets, but they still have to use him to run 7 times a game. Even imagine teams get wise to how to stop Brad Smith from the Wildcat though they use him more expansively in 2010 there … what then?

Here’s what it might look like.

So instead of just leading the league in rushing, they’d come in a devastating THIRD (just ahead of Miami) by 2009 standings … without a single scramble yard from the QB. Now I’m not saying this is how it will happen or that these guys stay healthy, but even in a worst case, I still firmly believe this team will be fine.

Mike Florio might be great when it comes to blatant rumor mongering, or making PR nicey nice, but Rex Ryan and his new lap-band can vomit up more than he’ll ever know about the game of football.

I’ll take Ryan’s assessment, thank you very much.

Thanks to W. Adams on this one.