Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know we’ve felt this way before. But what else are we supposed to do? We gotta have hope, right? Even when our ridiculous ownership and General Manager (GM) override all logic and choose an obviously inept head coach (HC) to run the machine, we have to try and find some hope! To have a little faith.
To be clear, I had almost zero hope for the Adam-Gase-led NY Jets. From the moment it was announced, I was bummed. I sought information that it was a fake report for an hour that night. I simply couldn’t believe that this is what the Jets chose to do. The introductory press conference was even worse than anything I could have imagined, and with my background being in addiction and mental health, I am convinced Adam Gase was on some sort of drug that day (and I know which one). The smelling salts incident was the first sideline look we got of our new HC. That right there only confirmed the theory for me.
But I tried. I tried my damndest to make lemonade out of the Gase lemon for over a year. The 2nd season I was learning what it felt like to be a doom and gloomer. I was about as hopeless as I had ever been as a Jets fan (and that includes the Rich Kotite years!) Trevor Lawrence any0ne?
So why is it that I say we are closer than most think now, when only a few months ago I was living in the darkness?
It’s about what’s been done.
On the surface it can seem that little has changed. We were 2-14 last season and stand at the 2nd overall pick in the upcoming NFL Draft. We don’t have a legit starting QB and there are question marks all over the place. So what it is? What exactly has been done?
First let’s use a little metaphoric visualization to get to a point. When you buy a fixer upper house on the cheap, You have to take a good long look over the place and assess the work ahead. What projects will take precedence over others? I would say it’s unwise to start hanging curtains when you have a pretty good idea the wall needs to be ripped out. Don’t address the tile work in the master bath when the plumbing is still galvanized pipe from the 70’s. And most importantly, you need to take a good hard look at the foundation before you take care of anything else. Period. If there are cracks or weak points, it simply needs to be taken care of before you move on.
Ya still with me?
So what does that mean for the NY Jets? What could be considered foundational in this project we’ve lost control of over the past 10 years? What would be most important?
Digging out the foundation so we can see the damage.
The best thing to come out of the Gase era was the hire of our first football GM in 2 decades. Joe Douglas (JD), for all of his inexperience being the top dog, has the background you want in a GM. Learning under Ozzie Newsome, arguably the finest GM in NFL history for 15 years is as good as it gets. Earning the respect from said GM to be promoted numerous times to positions of importance speaks volumes about Joe Douglas as an organizational asset.
But that hire was not all good. Joe Douglas was not hired on to be the boss. He was to share that responsibility with the least competent person on the staff. Adam Gase. So we had the blind with one hand on the controls of the backhoe as we tried to assess the damage hiding within the foundation itself. It simply could not and would not work.
This offseason opened with two of the most important and necessary changes to the NY Jets org. The firing of Adam Gase and the resolution that JD would be the end all be all big boss of the football operations. Both were announced within the first weeks after this dreadful season concluded. These moves are not to be understated. We simply would not be able to climb out of the pit we were in without an agreed upon and understood hierarchy for the rest of the staff to follow. We needed a captain. A position we have not had in far too long. This was now in place and while it seems simple and obvious, it took the Jets a decade to get there.
Secondarily we have been the most injured team in the NFL over the past 2 seasons combined. A rudderless ship with holes all over the hull. Is it a wonder why we sank? How can it be that the NY Jets are suffering significantly more injury than the league average. Who’s problem is it? The trainer? The player? Or is it an overall mindset and systemic issue where the NY Jets have not placed a premium on the health of the young men they pay millions of dollars to run around a football field? It stands to reason if you don’t know there is a problem, you can’t fix it. You don’t know what you don’t know. So, when you have an accountant running the football team for example, how is he supposed to diagnose and correct an issue he’s unaware of or ill equipped to address? He hires a trainer and places the blame there.
This new boss of ours, this Joe Douglas’ first order of business after he jettisoned his inept friend from the control structure, was to completely gut and revamp the medical, nutrition, strength & conditioning and rehab programs for the NY Jets. A ground breaking take on the overall whole that has not yet been done in the NFL. Hiring Dr. Brad Desweese to oversee the entirety of the operation with 4 other doctors in place throughout each aspect of the program is something the Jets have quite literally never seen before. This was not an overnight job and indicates JD has been working on this for some time. Probably right around the time half of his first draft class couldn’t suit up for week 1. Unacceptable! And it is no longer. Anyone can fire and hire a new strength and conditioning coach. Joe Douglas chose to take a swing at changing the game. Oh, he hired a new strength & conditioning coach as well. One with the job of holding back the intensity of the next item we will discuss.
Let’s talk about the other big deal move that has me sensing a sea change in Florham Park. We got rid of what many players and fans knew was a major issue with the NY Jets. Ding Dong the witch is dead was the song that came into so many of our minds when Adam Gase was finally told to fuck off. So, where did that leave us? Needing a new HC that’s where. Now, I don’t want to try and rewrite history to tell you that I was all Robert Saleh from the word go. That’s simply not the case. I can tell you when the interviews came down the pike Saleh was one of the guys I liked best out of the group, but any predictive powers I may possess were not able to pierce the shroud of who JD liked for the role. I was way off!
This is what I can tell you about him though. Just like the hiring of JD, there was not a single negative word written about Robert Saleh that I could find. Players love him. Coaches love him. Organizations love him and even the media seems to love him. This is rare in Jetsville. Even when we hired successful coaches such as Bill Parcells or Rex Ryan, there were the negative reports. That one was potentially going senile at his age or that the other was a glorified defensive coordinator were out there. Maybe positivity outweighed the negative, but it was there. There were the naysayers.
Not with JD or Saleh.
The Jets have hired 7 unsuccessful rookie HC’s before and to be honest I was leery of hiring yet another, but that’s the only knock anyone can dig up about either of the two men being discussed here. They are rooks, but every good HC or GM had to be a rookie at some point and there is no reason to let that stop you from grabbing what you see as potential greatness. Robert Saleh has that potential. Potential. That’s the ticket really.
Who thought Adam Gase or Christian Hackenberg had that same potential? Who outside of the singular men making the decisions to bring those fellas aboard? Certainly not the masses of Jets fans or media in the know. It had a completely different feel to it. We were the easy whipping boy. Even 1 hour after the hire, the NFL at large was easily able to laugh at Jetnation.
So, the laughing will continue for a bit. Of that I’m sure. I fully expect people to take their swings as they are used to it being easy to do so. It’s safe to poke the Jets and their fans. To say the Jets suck has been at the bedrock of NFL fandom for the past decade.
We needed a complete overhaul. No Free agent signing or draft pick was going to untie the knots twisted up by the unqualified men of the Jets brass. Nothing outside of a foundational shift was going to give the Jets faithful hope of reaching that far off place called respectability.
We are here. At the completion of a foundational rebuild. Now all we have to do is grab a few good players. When compared the the NY Jets actual problems, it almost seems too easy. It’s not of course, but the men we have in place look and act nothing like the myriad wannabe’s who’ve filled these positions before. This is the beginning of a new era. One where Jets fans get to pick up their own stick and poke back. I’ll warn you now. They’re not gonna like it. And that’s just fine by me
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