Category Archives: Opinion/Bassett
The New York Jets, two minutes from infamy, salvaged an ugly win today 31-27 over the Buffalo Bills, an opponent that had not scored a touchdown in ten quarters. Thanks to Dick Jauron, Gang Green is still in the playoff hunt. Just barely. It didn’t have to be this way.
The Jets began the game showing some hopeful signs. Evidently, Brian Schottenheimer had actually produced a terrific game plan. The offense, moribund for the past two weeks, scored easily to start the game with clever plays and superior execution. It only took 3:06. There were completions to the wide receivers (Coles and Cotchery for those of you who have forgotten their names), solid running particularly a nice scamper around the left side by Tony Richardson, and a nifty play fake that worked so exquisitely that Brett Favre found himself alone on the left side line with Wayne Hunter out in front of him to block. If Hunter had been able to block anyone, it would have gone for seven, but, as Jets luck goes these days, he couldn’t. Still, it was 7-0 in an instant. (more…)
As I sat at the dinner table last night. My wife who had avoided the subject for 24 hours (my traditional sulking period) looked at me from across the table and asked “so .. the Jets lost yesterday?”
Undertatement of the century.
If this isn’t a wake up call to the players I don’t know what is. The way it’s shaping up, the Jets have to win the division to get into the playoffs, and the way they’ve played the past two weeks, I just don’t see that happening.
From looking at the schedules for the Jets, Dolphins and Patriots I just don’t feel confident in this team winning out or that the Dolphins or Patriots are going to give them any more breathing room when I look at their schedules. All three teams have at least two light games left. It’s not a good picture for the Jets’ playoff chances.
The only way that the Jets know they are getting into the playoffs is by winning three straight. The crazy thing is that this season, even if the Jets win eleven games — the best they could do this season at this point — there’s no guarantee this year that eleven wins gets you a wildcard in the AFC.
While the Jets have been struggling to win, the Titans clinched the South but the Colts are surging. In the North, Baltimore is a game out of first place behind the Steelers. Both teams are 9-4 and there’s a real chance that both teams could win two games, or even one of these teams win two and at least one of the AFC East teams could win three straight totalling eleven wins.
I’m putting this back to the top of the page, as I think many of you didn’t see it this morning …
I watched the past few weeks of Titans games and noticed a few things that were worth pointing out about this team from watching the tape.
Titans Special Teams
Carr’s Drive Starter — Chris Carr has a great average on kick returns so far this season, but I only saw a few plays where he made a great long play. From what I saw, there’s some hesitance when he gets the ball and approaches his blockers. I only saw a few big plays of his, but they seem to correlate to his blockers setting up for him, and he generally only gets big gains with four blockers back to cover for him on kicks. As far as punts, he’s not quite as effective as Oakland’s Johnnie Lee Higgins, so with the Jets special teams as long as they keep their assignments, they should be fine.
I got home at 2AM. I’m bleary-eyed and tired but somehow energized, here’s my junk drawer of thoughts from last night’s win. I’ll have more nuggets later, but this is a start.
It’s Been a While — The last time the Jets were all alone atop the division was seven long years, ago … November 19th, 2001. The Jets beat the Miami Dolphins on November 18th and were a game ahead of the Pats. It was Brady’s first season running the ship thanks to Mo Lewis. The Jets and Patriots faced each other the very next week. The Patriots won the game, tied the division and never looked back. It’s hard to say whether this was the watershed moment, as we are in the midst of it, but remember this game and this night … just in case.
No apologies for what I write below, but sometimes I read things that are too good to pass up. Am I poking Pats fans in the eye (I learned it by watching Wilfork!!!) intentionally? Probably, but I just don’t care.
There’s such a fine line between clever and stupid. No matter how much you love the Jets, it’s still amusing and fun to watch Fitzy denigrate the Jets (NSFW language) on his semi-satirical TownieNews site, but then there’s just other fans that take themselves a little too seriously .. like say tattooing your dome with the Pats logo. Here are those fans for your viewing amusement.
I took a quick twirl around the blogosphere to see what Pats bloggers were writing about when it came to the bolstering of their secondary’s depth chart by adding Ty Law.
PatsBlog seems indignant
Re-instating an old post we haven’t done so far this year … here’s a look at who’s up and who’s down from the Jets 26-17 victory over the Bills.
Add your ups and downs in the comments:
Up
Kris Jenkins — Led the defense with three QB hits and two sacks. Was the disruption that helped cause the Elam interception.
Thomas Jones — Rushed the ball only 12 times, but ran it well at a 5.8 YPC clip. He also was an instrumental check down late in the game for Favre.
Jerricho Cotchery — Had six catches on the day but was a big part of Favre’s ability to move the chains in the air.
Leon Washington — His returns, a heads up play to field a kick while standing out of bounds and a huge 40 yard catch and run during the first drive outweighed his inconsistent running.
Brett Favre — Yes, he threw only one INT and no TDs, but he for the most part played the scheme that his coaches wanted to, and he didn’t turn the ball over more than that one time. This might have been the first time Favre overcame real adversity to play smart and win in a Jets uniform.
Abram Elam — Elam defense two passes and scored the go-ahead points for the Jets on a 92 yard interception and return for score.
Reggie Hodges — Only punted once for 46 yards, but it was his clutch placement on the last field goal that cemented it for the Jets.
Darrelle Revis — Forced a huge fumble of Trent Edwards early in the game to set up a first and goal for the Jets and stuck with Lee Evans most of the day, who was limited to just four catches for 41 yards.
Down
Dwight Lowery — Was called for another passer interference penalty, and had another rough day at the office for the rookie. Lowery was eventually benched in the second quarter for David Barrett. Lowery’s going to face some adversity, so see how he responds to it now.
Brad Smith — One rush and no catches for Brad Smith. Smith was credited with two special teams tackles.
Matt Matros, Jet fan, author, and really freaking good professional poker player and I chatted last night about the whole situation with Cheese King of Green Bay and how the Jets have played it.
I noted to Matt that Tannenbaum and Mangini are sometimes maddening to me, especially after seeing the news on Gruden blowing his top over the same situation and how he feels it’s plaguing his team. Tangini could just say “we’re not looking at Favre, period” and be done with it, in the process making things easier on their own QBs in front of the press … but they refuse to … why not?
If we’ve one thing in the blogging game, it’s that sometimes it’s best to reserve judgement for a few days, let things settle THEN come up with some cogent opinions on the relevant topic.
This seems to be one of those cases.
For all the bluster and panning the national reporters and insiders have been focused on the Jets giving Calvin Pace $20 million guaranteed — which I’ll admit I too was shocked over and noted the other day … there’s a large difference between guarantees and guaranteed.
As a note, this turned out to be a really long post, full of quotes and such. But for the avid reader of this blog, it’s really, really important in my opinion to read this through and see the conclusions I’m coming to at the end, based on the facts at hand … I would be really interested to see if you think the same way or not, let us know in the comments … thanks! -BB
Matt Walsh has told ESPN investigative journalist Matt Fish recently some interesting information on the whole taping scene in New England and his role in the investigation. Matt Walsh was Matt Estrella (the guy who was caught in the Meadowlands) prior to Estrella taking the job:
“If they’re doing a thorough investigation — they didn’t contact me. So draw your own conclusions. Maybe they felt they didn’t need to. Maybe the league feels they got satisfactory answers from everything the Patriots sent them … No, the league has never called me. Neither have the Patriots. And really, I would be surprised if they did. Then all of a sudden — I don’t know how much the league or Patriots know about my stance or how I feel about things — for them to put in a call to me, what are they going to say? Are they going to try and threaten me? Or say, don’t talk about it? Then, they are putting themselves out there and looking bad as far as if I turn around and say, ‘Hey, guess what, the league called me and said [we're] gonna take away your [401K] if you say anything about this.’”
“If I had a reason to want to go public or tell a story, I could have done it before this even broke. I could have said everything rather than having [Eric] Mangini be the one to bring it out.”
Not to mention that Brian Daboll and Steve Scarnecchia (a video guy) also came on board from the Pats …
As Free Agency looms in just over a month, we here at TJB are going to start looking at some of the players that are likely to be available. With a large amount of money at their disposal, the Jets should figure to be players between early March and the 2008 Draft in late April. Please note, we are starting with players that the beat writers have “heard” that — no matter how remote the possibility — the Jets might be interested in . Today’s Free Agent, Baltimore Ravens LB Terrell Suggs.
Background
At 6-3 260 pounds and with speed enough to rush the passer, Suggs is the quintessential DE/OLB for a 3-4 and as such, Suggs plays at a number of positions across the field. Drafted in 2003 in the first round with the 10th pick by the Ravens, Terrell Suggs has already accumulated 45 sacks in just five years.
It’s the offseason for the media in New York … and you KNOW what that means! It’s time for media-types to imagine worthless what-if scenarios of how their team could have been great because they could have gotten (insert future Hall of Famer here).
In this year’s first episode, Newsday’s Jim Baumbach thinks he’s doing us a big favor by telling us Jets fans we could have had Favre.
Damn! In some alternate universe, we could all be wearing Wrangler Jeans right now!!
This is like the fourth time I have seen this article in New York papers over the years and at least Baumbach knows that much.
This story is nothing new, especially for Jets fans. Wolf even admitted he bumps into Jets fans from time to time who mention this to him. But seeing Favre all these years later still among the best quarterbacks in the league, preparing his team one win away from another trip to Super Bowl, must just eat away at Jets fans.
I don’t exactly know why, but I keep hearing the Guns n Roses song “You Could Be Mine” over and over again in my head.
Personally this kind of stuff doesn’t eat at me as Baumbach suggests it should. What does eat at me is the media telling me what I should think about a given situation.
I’m not really sure what purpose this serves other than for the media to make local fans even more miserable than they already are … ah there’s just nothing as fun as kicking a dead horse to a press-pass carrying member of the media.
So let’s just get cathartic once and for all and help Jim and the rest of the NY media out on this and just throw out all the names of players that maybe, possibly, could have been Jets over the years and then they can write similar hand-wringing articles for years to come. Then I will write a note to Jim (and post here) where I can give him scores of names to write articles like this for Newsday until July.
Brett Favre as a Jet (Done)
Peyton Manning as a Jet
Ed Reed as a Jet
Brady Quinn as a Jet
Add yours to the comments … time to dig deep … Jim really needs our help to think up columns!!
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