If someone walks up to you and says, man I knew these Jets were going to be good this season you are allowed to either laugh in their face, smack them in their face or spray fart in their dinner. Depending on how bitter of a person you are, if you're a Jet fan you're probably aiming for the latter. Even as an optimistic Jet fan I figured they would rattle off 6 wins this season, but now they stand at 7-5 with a legitamte possibility of making the playoffs and these are the reasons why.
Emergence of a Few Unexpected Studs
Everyone has stepped up on the Jets roster but in particular their are two players that I had absolutely positively zero expectations for at the start of the season and have turned out to be key components of the team. The first is Jerricho Cotchery, who was never anything more than a 3rd wideout during the Herm years. Now every week he seems to establish himself more and more in the lineup. He has the one thing that is seemingly undervalued the most by these NFL scouts, he catches the friggin ball. I read a stat on Sportsline yesterday which said that Cotchery has caught 60 of the 88 balls the highest percentage of thrown to/caught for a Jet in over 10 years. The guy makes tough catches in traffic he makes the easy catch and fights through tackles, he's been fun to watch and seeing him in a Jet uniform this season it is easily evident as to why he holds so many NC State records.
The second player is Bryan Thomas a former first round selection by Terry Bradway and company who for the most part rotted on the bench behind Shaun Ellis and John Abraham, and during the perennial Abraham injury did nothing to validate his high draft selection. This year however, Thomas has blossomed into an ideal DE/OLB for the Jets psuedo 3-4 defense. He's matched his career total in sacks, not career high, career total, aka his first 4 seasons. He has 63 tackles for an outside position and he is versatile enough this season to both rush the passer and drop back and cover the Tight End in traffic. His improvement in 2006 has been incredibly important to the Jets success. How could I pass up a picture of Thomas sacking Pretty Boy Tom.
Chad Pennington
Obviously the biggest questionmark of the season was whether or not Chad Pennington could throw the ball farther than a 9 year old girl or whether Jets fans would be watching a quarterback with the exact opposite traits, gun arm bad decisions in Patrick Ramsey. Well going into week 13 Chad Pennington has had his share of really bad games (Browns, Bears) but for the most part has put the Jets in position to win with his decision making and play calling at the line of scrimmage. He still does not possess ideal arm strength, not even close to it, and the Jets rarely throw the ball deep, but he has a knack for keeping the chains moving which is exactly what you want an offense to do. While Pennington certainly isn't a pro bowl caliber quarterback right now talent wise, he's still a winner and a hell of a competitor and he has helped fight to get this team to 7-5.
Eric Mangini and the Coaching Staff
The best trait about Mangini and he harps on this all the time, calls it his 5 Second Rule, is he plays everything week by week. Just look at their running back situation, every week they use a different guy. Kevan Barlow plowed over the Patriots in the mud in New England, this past week not on the active roster and instead Cedric Houston, unactive for much of the start of the season, has a big game. He came in and evaluated the players with no predisposed opinions of players, he started Jerricho Cotchery instead of 2 year starter Justin McCarreins and come week 10 McCarreins volunteers himself to play on special teams. The players love this guy, he gets them to focus on the upcoming games, he has them watching classic boxing matches for motivation, right now he's pushing all the right buttons.
In addition Mangini surrounded himself with two guys dying for coordinator jobs. Brian Schottenheimer comes up with completely different schemes every week, utilizes different personal sets, and keeps the opposing defenses off balance. Bob Sutton on the other hand has turned the Jets defense around following their bye week. The Jets the first half of the season were struggling with the 3-4 scheme and getting gashed by the run. Since the Patriots game the Jets have played very good defense keeping the team in every game.
Intelligent Offseason Moves
One of the biggest problems with the past regume was they never produced pro bowlers. Jonathon Vilma last season was the only pro bowler who was drafted by Terry Bradway. Bradway gave a massive contract to Pennington who had yet to start a full season and made several other bonehead decisions. So when he finally stepped down, I was pretty happy.
Mike Tannenbaum then took over the position and the first thing he did was hire an old acquaintence, Eric Mangini, which has certainly worked out for the best but that was only the start of the intelligent moves from Tannenbaum. Both products of the Bill Parcells tree they highly valued the draft. Therefore instead of trying to perge salary in order to sign the incredibly talented oft injured John Abraham they traded him to the Falcons for a first round pick. At the time I thought this was a good move, always been bitter with Abraham for never seeming to fight back from injury especially in 04, but looking back now its a fantastic deal. With that pick combined with their #4 pick they drafted D'Brickashaw and Mangold who have turned what was one of the worst Offensive Lines in the league to a unit excelling down the stretch. By trading away Abraham, they got rid of a guy who is always injured, he's only played 4 games this season, and opened up a spot in the lineup for the afermentioned Bryan Thomas. The rest of the draft turned out to be a similar success and they refused to shell out big bucks to any name free agent.
Weak Schedule
Coming into the season I looked at the schedule and said wow they play almost every bad team in the league. The face the NFC North, the worst NFC division, the AFC South the worst AFC division, and then get to play both the Raiders and the Browns. Basically I looked at their schedule and thought, man it sucks that they aren't going to be any good this year, this would be a perfect schedule to make a run at the division and a bye week, its part of the reason I thought the Pats would have the #1 seed in the AFC. My exact words were the Jets were going to be "bad, but not bad enough for Adrian Peterson". Well I was wrong the Jets aren't bad and they might stumble into the exact opposite because of their schedule, a wild card spot.
I don't know what to expect from the Jets down the stretch or in their possible playoff run but as a Jet fan I can say that this is the most enjoyably surprising season I have ever experienced. With that being said if Willis McGahee runs for his typical 150+ against the Jets in a victory on sunday I'll probably throw my foot threw the tv screen.
Emergence of a Few Unexpected Studs
Everyone has stepped up on the Jets roster but in particular their are two players that I had absolutely positively zero expectations for at the start of the season and have turned out to be key components of the team. The first is Jerricho Cotchery, who was never anything more than a 3rd wideout during the Herm years. Now every week he seems to establish himself more and more in the lineup. He has the one thing that is seemingly undervalued the most by these NFL scouts, he catches the friggin ball. I read a stat on Sportsline yesterday which said that Cotchery has caught 60 of the 88 balls the highest percentage of thrown to/caught for a Jet in over 10 years. The guy makes tough catches in traffic he makes the easy catch and fights through tackles, he's been fun to watch and seeing him in a Jet uniform this season it is easily evident as to why he holds so many NC State records.
The second player is Bryan Thomas a former first round selection by Terry Bradway and company who for the most part rotted on the bench behind Shaun Ellis and John Abraham, and during the perennial Abraham injury did nothing to validate his high draft selection. This year however, Thomas has blossomed into an ideal DE/OLB for the Jets psuedo 3-4 defense. He's matched his career total in sacks, not career high, career total, aka his first 4 seasons. He has 63 tackles for an outside position and he is versatile enough this season to both rush the passer and drop back and cover the Tight End in traffic. His improvement in 2006 has been incredibly important to the Jets success. How could I pass up a picture of Thomas sacking Pretty Boy Tom.Chad Pennington
Obviously the biggest questionmark of the season was whether or not Chad Pennington could throw the ball farther than a 9 year old girl or whether Jets fans would be watching a quarterback with the exact opposite traits, gun arm bad decisions in Patrick Ramsey. Well going into week 13 Chad Pennington has had his share of really bad games (Browns, Bears) but for the most part has put the Jets in position to win with his decision making and play calling at the line of scrimmage. He still does not possess ideal arm strength, not even close to it, and the Jets rarely throw the ball deep, but he has a knack for keeping the chains moving which is exactly what you want an offense to do. While Pennington certainly isn't a pro bowl caliber quarterback right now talent wise, he's still a winner and a hell of a competitor and he has helped fight to get this team to 7-5.
Eric Mangini and the Coaching Staff
The best trait about Mangini and he harps on this all the time, calls it his 5 Second Rule, is he plays everything week by week. Just look at their running back situation, every week they use a different guy. Kevan Barlow plowed over the Patriots in the mud in New England, this past week not on the active roster and instead Cedric Houston, unactive for much of the start of the season, has a big game. He came in and evaluated the players with no predisposed opinions of players, he started Jerricho Cotchery instead of 2 year starter Justin McCarreins and come week 10 McCarreins volunteers himself to play on special teams. The players love this guy, he gets them to focus on the upcoming games, he has them watching classic boxing matches for motivation, right now he's pushing all the right buttons.In addition Mangini surrounded himself with two guys dying for coordinator jobs. Brian Schottenheimer comes up with completely different schemes every week, utilizes different personal sets, and keeps the opposing defenses off balance. Bob Sutton on the other hand has turned the Jets defense around following their bye week. The Jets the first half of the season were struggling with the 3-4 scheme and getting gashed by the run. Since the Patriots game the Jets have played very good defense keeping the team in every game.
Intelligent Offseason Moves
One of the biggest problems with the past regume was they never produced pro bowlers. Jonathon Vilma last season was the only pro bowler who was drafted by Terry Bradway. Bradway gave a massive contract to Pennington who had yet to start a full season and made several other bonehead decisions. So when he finally stepped down, I was pretty happy.
Mike Tannenbaum then took over the position and the first thing he did was hire an old acquaintence, Eric Mangini, which has certainly worked out for the best but that was only the start of the intelligent moves from Tannenbaum. Both products of the Bill Parcells tree they highly valued the draft. Therefore instead of trying to perge salary in order to sign the incredibly talented oft injured John Abraham they traded him to the Falcons for a first round pick. At the time I thought this was a good move, always been bitter with Abraham for never seeming to fight back from injury especially in 04, but looking back now its a fantastic deal. With that pick combined with their #4 pick they drafted D'Brickashaw and Mangold who have turned what was one of the worst Offensive Lines in the league to a unit excelling down the stretch. By trading away Abraham, they got rid of a guy who is always injured, he's only played 4 games this season, and opened up a spot in the lineup for the afermentioned Bryan Thomas. The rest of the draft turned out to be a similar success and they refused to shell out big bucks to any name free agent.
Weak Schedule
Coming into the season I looked at the schedule and said wow they play almost every bad team in the league. The face the NFC North, the worst NFC division, the AFC South the worst AFC division, and then get to play both the Raiders and the Browns. Basically I looked at their schedule and thought, man it sucks that they aren't going to be any good this year, this would be a perfect schedule to make a run at the division and a bye week, its part of the reason I thought the Pats would have the #1 seed in the AFC. My exact words were the Jets were going to be "bad, but not bad enough for Adrian Peterson". Well I was wrong the Jets aren't bad and they might stumble into the exact opposite because of their schedule, a wild card spot.
I don't know what to expect from the Jets down the stretch or in their possible playoff run but as a Jet fan I can say that this is the most enjoyably surprising season I have ever experienced. With that being said if Willis McGahee runs for his typical 150+ against the Jets in a victory on sunday I'll probably throw my foot threw the tv screen.
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