Revis Offers Reason To Watch Jets

Jake Delhomme knew he was in for a long day yesterday afternoon with Darrelle Revis waiting to receive an interception from Delhomme.

Delhomme throws interceptions to cornerbacks going back to a horrible performance against the Cardinals in the playoffs last year at home. To this day, he can’t cure his interception woes.

Yesterday, Delhomme continued his frustrating season by throwing four interceptions with two to Jets’ beleaguered safety Kerry Rhodes, and two to Revis. With Rhodes, it’s news since he has been terrible all year, yet with Revis, it’s expected.

This shows the type of year Revis is having when everyone looks at his work as ho-hum.

When one looks at the Jets’ roster, when it comes to having a Pro Bowl player, Revis should stand out. It’s a good bet he will be playing in Miami this year.

Revis not only has four interceptions, but he shut down the other team’s best receivers by forcing incompletions, or missed passes.

Randy Moss can attest to that, even he publicly denies it.

Even if the wide receiver catches the ball, he rarely breaks out with the Jets cornerback shadowing him.

Revis proved he can be a playmaker too by running for touchdown, as he demonstrated yesterday.

He is simply exciting to watch, and he is a player that the team can build around.

What’s amazing about him is that he keeps his mouth shut, and lets his play do the talking. That’s how a player gets it done.

Rhodes and Bart Scott should take notice to Revis’ approach.

Scott likes to talk about how being a trash-talker raises a player’s intensity. That’s a bunch of hogwash even if it suits Scott well in his career.

If a player needs to talk to create attention and be a good player, one wonders how good he is.

Revis shows he can get it done by being a meticulous in his preparation and pushing himself well in practice everyday. He is a football player.

He has a great knack of knowing where to read the ball, and that’s something no one can teach.

His teams stinks, but since he plays in a major market, this should help his chances of not just being a Pro Bowl player but being a Defensive Player of the Year.

We all look to like at some bright spots of a lost cause of a season, and it’s hard to do most of the time.

In this case, Revis proves it’s easy to find something to be excited about.

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Another Jets Season Goes To Waste

Every year, the Jets express their optimism about how this season will be different and how they are not the same old Jets, but in the end we all know nothing changes. So much so that at this point we’ve become numb to the routine.

The Jets are playing out the season for the next few weeks, after a recent rough stretch that doomed their playoff hopes.

Everyone can talk about how this year was a rebuilding year with a rookie quarterback. But these same people felt differently after an astounding September start, one that got them thinking about winning the division, so they aren’t fooling anyone.

After a decade of disappointment, it makes one wonder why we get their hopes up every year or bother paying attention at all.

The Record columnist Ian O’Connor said it best; he said that the Gang Green are the Cubs of football.

If Brett Favre and Bill Parcells couldn’t take the team to championship land, who can?

It’s hard to believe Rex Ryan will do this. He can’t coach, and even though he is learning on the job, it looks like he is nothing more than a coordinator at best.

Maybe Mark Sanchez can be the man like Joe Namath was, but he has a lot to learn about the role, and it’s not just throwing the deep ball to the wide receiver. It’s about learning how to lead and how to figure it out in tight spots.

It sure looks like Sanchez is falling on the level of Matt Leinart on the basis of a suspect work ethic. He is only a rookie right now, but he needs to show progress till the end of next season or this will turn out to be a bust. Maybe even to the point where Ryan and Mike Tannenbaum would lose their jobs.

Sanchez would also likely cost Brian Schottenheimer his job as the offensive coordinator, after a disappointing season and a regressing quarterback.

It’s imperative that the rookie head coach and the rookie quarterback dole out some wins in the final month of the season, just so there’s a reason for folks to believe in those two when heading into next season.

Jets owner Woody Johnson needs to set the tone by expecting results instead of worrying about marketing and selling PSL seats. That type of attitude rubs off on the players and the front office.

If Bill Cowher or Mike Shanahan wants to coach Johnson’s team all of a sudden, the owner could make a good impression for the organization by showing that mediocrity will not be tolerated.

But that’s the problem right there. There is no accountability, and it’s no wonder why we see disappointments.

It would be nice if this franchise acted like a professional franchise who knew how to win and run a good operation with competent coaches and players. It would be nice if this team would be at the level of the Patriots, Steelers, and Colts every year.

It seems this team misses out on the playoffs more often than making it. Even when they qualify for the playoffs, its one game and then out.

Even though everyone will keep an eye on them from now till the end of December, what is there to be excited about on a lost season?

The Jets have a loyal fanbase that bleeds passionately for their team, and they deserve more than what they have received these past 10 years.

It’s tiring to watch this same old movie year after year, and then reading about it in the paper. Enough should be enough.

 

 

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Tannenbaum Miscalculates Quarterback Situation

Mike Tannenbaum loves to be bold when it comes to making moves for the Jets.

He has done that in his first few years as the Jets general manager, whether it’s tampering to get an elite receiver or making a trade to get that big name to run an offense.

A good example of that came in the NFL Draft this year when Tannenbaum made a trade with Eric Mangini’s Browns that moved the Jets up in the draft, and that’s where he used that pick to draft Mark Sanchez.

It was a brilliant move since the Jets selected a quarterback they can build around for the next 10 years.

With that said, one wonders if it was a right move to have Sanchez start right away.

No one questioned that in September when the team played well to the point Sanchez was called the Sanchise.

But now, it’s easy for everyone to question it.

Fans should have tempered their excitement by realizing that rookies go through slumps. The Jets also always seem to be under Murphy’s Law which everything always goes wrong for them going back to their star-crossed history.

That’s the case with Sanchez these last few weeks, and one wonders why the Jets failed to get a competent quarterback that could give them a chance to succeed while the rookie quarterback learned slowly on the job.

A guy like Jon Kitna or Derek Anderson would have made sense. Either one could have been handy in today’s Jets’ 34-13 loss to the Patriots.

The Patriots did okay, but the game could have been winnable for the Jets with a competent quarterback. The Jets knew what it was like to have that quarterback last year with Brett Favre, but the team’s failures took the life out of him in the end and the team was happy to see him move on.

Sanchez played horrible for the entire game. He threw four interceptions, increasing  his total to 16 interceptions this season. Sanchez also failed to move his team to  Patriots’ territory.

Rex Ryan should have made a quarterback change in the middle of the third quarter for the sake of creating a spark for his struggling team. Kellen Clemens may not be the answer, but it can’t get any worse.

Ryan owed it to the team to see what Clemens can do in this type of situation.

It says something about the lack of depth the Jets posses at quarterback when the Jets head coach settled on Sanchez instead of Clemens and Erik Ainge in training camp.

This falls on Tannenbaum for not giving Sanchez an opportunity to earn his starting job. Someone needed to push the former USC quarterback, and that’s why Mr. T should have worked hard to find that quarterback that would keep this team afloat when a rookie goes through his struggles.

If the team was going to contend for a playoff spot, then maybe Clemens would be the way to go.  Now, Ryan has no choice but to let his beleaguered quarterback figure out how to overcome his struggles.

The Jets need to hope that Sanchez does not completely lose his confidence for the rest of his career.

It’s doubtful this will happen to a guy with his arm, physique, and football intelligence. But if that ever happens, the Jets will have no one to blame but themselves for putting  the kid in a position to fail.

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Motivated Belichick Gives Jets No Chance

The Jets knew they were in for a tough game against the Patriots at Foxborough after they outplayed, outworked and outcoached their counterpart in the second week of the football season.

Now, it gets harder with Bill Belichick using the media’s criticism of him as a method to get the Patriots to rally around him after his decision turned out to be failure in throwing the ball at fourth down in Colts territory

Not only will it spur Belichick’s team to victory tomorrow afternoon, but it can move them to do better things in the next few months.

It won’t be a blowout as the media make it out to be when one looks at the history of both teams facing each other in the Belichick era, but the Jets don’t have a chance in this contest.

The Jets defense showed its vulnerability in the last few weeks with their lack of ability to finish off an opposing team and their failure of blitzing the quarterback. Certain guys on that unit are not playing to their potential.

People can talked about how the Jets rank defensively, but who cares about that. If they can’t get it done when it matters, rankings mean nothing. It’s hard to take the Jets seriously on defense after their performance in recent weeks.

Tom Brady looked flustered in the first meeting of the season, but he was coming off an injury at the time so he was going to look rusty. Now, he is hitting his stride at the right time.

Brady connects to Randy Moss lately along with the rest of his receivers. With the way the Jets are playing defensively, Brady’s eyes should lit up with this opportunity.

Darrelle Revis stopped Moss couple of months ago, but look for Brady’s main target to get the best out of Revis this time around with Wes Welker playing after not playing at Giants Stadium. Moss will get more touches with Welker’s presence.

Mark Sanchez played okay last week and he managed to make plays against the Patriots in his first ever start against them as the Jets quarterback, but Belichick devises different sorts of schemes when his defensive unit faces the same quarterback for the second time around so Sanchez will likely have a hard time in this upcoming contest.

The running game should give the Jets a chance in this game, but their running backs can only do so much. It will come down to the passing game, but the Jets don’t have the receivers to match up with the Patriots.

The Patriots succeed when they play at their home turf with their offense scoring more points and the defense displaying its dominance. They look at it as an insult when an opposing team go to their place and play well so they got that going for them.

Belichick hates losing to the Jets, and bet on him to pull all the stops in getting a victory that his team needs to put their hated rivals away for good in the division race just like how Ryan pulled everything out of his playbook to get that well-deserved victory against the Patriots.

Right now, the Patriots are better than the Jets in coaching, defense and offense. They look like they are peaking at the right time despite their mistake on Sunday Night Football.

Gang Green look like the team to beat in September, but that means nothing. It’s how a team does late in the season that counts the most.

In recent years, they start off well just to falter at the wrong time in November and December while the Patriots play their best in the final two months of the season.

That’s the difference between a pretender and a contender, and that’s why the Jets and the Patriots are heading to different directions.

It’s easy to see who is winning this game.

The game should come down to the fourth quarter, but this time, the hoodie gets the last laugh over an amateur coach.

 

 

 

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Jets in Crisis: Ryan and Sanchez Unravels

Losing causes people to do stupid things. New York York Jets head coach Rex Ryan and quarterback Mark Sanchez have demonstrated that in recent days, as the Jets are in crisis mode, having lost five of their last six games.

On Monday, Ryan cried in a team meeting.  Soon after, he fired one of his coaches and release a backup cornerback.

Meanwhile, Sanchez was immature by setting up his own press conference and attempting to avoid questions after the Jets’ frustrating loss on Sunday.

These actions are evidence of the turmoil the Jets are in.  These sorts of actions are never good, especially with several weeks to go until the regular season is over.

Jets GM Mike Tannenbaum should be very concerned with the way Ryan is approaching his team’s slump. While everyone thinks the rookie head coach is showing his passion, his recent actions send the wrong message to his players, that he is frustrated with what is going on.

Players look for coaches to lead, to stand tall and direct them when the team is in a slump. They expect solutions out of Ryan, but so far, he hasn’t been able to provide many answers.

When a coach starts losing it, players tune him out. Ryan must make sure he doesn’t lose his player.

It’s okay to cry in a spontaneous fashion, but if Ryan keeps doing it, well then this is nothing more than grandstanding, and that seems to be the case with what we have here.

Great coaches offer encouragement. When asked about the questionable coaching decision of Bill Belichick against the Colts last weekend, Junior Seau mentioned yesterday on SportsNet New York’s Daily News Live that Bill Belichick expects his players to have a short memory about both good and bad times.

Ryan would have been better off discussing how this is an opportunity for the Jets to get back in the division race with a win against the Patriots. He should have preached about the importance of the game on Sunday.

The Jets head coach screwed up by firing defensive line coach Kerry Locklin and cutting Ahman Carroll. He made these moves in an attempt to cover himself and showed that he is doing something about the losing.

Making these moves will not make this team any better and it won’t send a message to his players. These players are not smart enough to execute or perform certain plays. They can’t seem to finish so it’s ridiculous to blame them.

As for Mark Sanchez, one wonders what exactly was he thinking when he held that bizarre press conference after the game. He rambled incoherently when he talked about what took place in the game, and then he got testy with some of the questions that reporters asked of him.

That’s not how a quarterback should be behaving, and it’s a good bet Ryan and Tannenbaum talked to Sanchez about it.

Sanchez has shown flashes of greatness on the field, but being a quarterback is more than just showing up on Sundays.

He needs to be a proper spokesman to his team and he needs to be held accountable when things go bad, not shy away or act like a fool. Answering questions when he has a bad game is part of his job.

This is not the first time he acted like a child. He cried and pouted in an awful performance against the Bills.

Sanchez will learn as he grows into the job, but it’s certainly something the Jets don’t want to see in a time like this.

Obviously, both the rookie coach and the rookie quarterback were going to have some rocky times in their first year, but that doesn’t get them off the hook.

They should not have been so naive to think that a great start would be a steppingstone to a great season. A rookie quarterback experiences rough times during the course of the year, and as confident as Sanchez is, he had to know this was going to happen eventually.

What will make both Ryan and Sanchez successful is how they get out of this situation.

They can start by winning. That’s always a tonic to these problems.

Also, they need to just accept responsibility and move on rather than let the losses get the best of them.

It will take experience for that to happen.

One can only hope these two learn something from their mistakes.

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Ryan’s Rhetoric Grows Stale

When the Jets introduced Rex Ryan to everyone for the very first time, Ryan talked of his team hanging out with President Barack Obama. He meant the Jets would win a championship when he mentioned Obama’s name.

It was cute when he said it. Ryan played it smart when he talked about what he expects out of himself and his team as the new coach of the Jets.

Before training camp, he talked about how he wasn’t interested in kissing Bill Belichick’s rings in a drive-time show. It sounded good, since he made an impression to his players and his superiors.

One would think Ryan would stop once everyone got the point but, even once the season started, he kept talking. He called up Jets season-ticket holders to get them fired up in the team’s home opener.

His approach worked when the Jets played well enough to beat the Patriots. But then the team struggled with a 3-0 start.

Now, if they don’t run off some victories this month, they are in danger of letting this season get away from them. 

Ryan tried to create a spark, by calling on Jets fans to get loud and create a hostile environment when the Jaguars come to town tomorrow afternoon.

At some point though, Ryan needs to realize that being chatty wears out on the fans.

Sportswriters love it, because their editors get eye-opening quotes to sell their newspapers, but fans demand that he and his team do their talking on the field, not on the podium.

Great coaches use their best speeches in the locker room for their players’ attention, not for the publics’. Bill Parcells loved to speak his mind, but he knew when to quiet down.This is where Ryan needs to improve.

Ryan’s act has become tiredsome, especially with the team’s current losses. Motivational words are great if the team is mainly winning. But when a team is losing, no one wants to hear the words, they want to see the action.

He should save his exciting words during a win or loss for the postgame. By talking almost everyday about what his team is going to do and how he believes in them, it becomes nothing more than hot air.

Sometimes, it’s better if a team remains quiet and disinterested. When all is said and done, every team will approach the Jets as a game that they want to win badly.

The Dolphins will always treat their games against the Jets like the Super Bowl  as long as Ryan continues to coach the Gang Green this way. Bet on the Patriots to do the same.

Ryan’s team does not need that, especially when their difficult-to-win games.

Ryan shouldn’t be telling fans how to react. New Yorkers know when to cheer and boo without the encouragement of the scoreboard. The Jets head coach should focus on getting his team ready to play and put them in a position to win on Sundays.

If he does that, fans will be fired up. It’s that simple.

Ryan is no better than Eric Mangini, Al Groh and Herman Edwards. Maybe a little more humility and a little less talk would help the Jets win.

But maybe a losing season can make Ryan realize his act is not working. If that’s the case, he may be better off.

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Giants-Chargers: Giants Know Losing These Days

When an opposing team leave the home team’s turf as victors after almost losing the game with couple of minutes remaining, it’s not a good thing.

That was the case with the Giants yesterday evening. They outplayed the Chargers for most of the game, but in the end, they lost when Philip Rivers engineered several drives to propel the Chargers a thrilling a 21-20 victory.

There’s no way to sugarcoat this. This was a disappointing loss for the Big Blue and it shows they lost their way of knowing how to win.

How can a team recover from what took place at Giants Stadium yesterday?

Great teams don’t lose games like this, but this year’s Giants can. It makes one wonder about this team’s toughness and intelligence. 

After watching this contest, the Giants lack both attributes. How do they let the Chargers go out of  their way to move the ball around against an allegedly tough defense?

The Giants defense played physical by sacking Rivers often and shadowing the Chargers running back duo of LaDainian Tomlinson and Darren Sporles. Yet when it mattered in the end, they were missing in action.

They untouched Rivers on that game-winning play while Jackson showed he had no trouble getting into the end zone. That is called a lapse.

That wasn’t the only bad play from the Giants. They botched a field goal and a game-winning touchdown attempt down the stretch.

It’s a recipe of knowing how to lose, and it takes place only for losing teams. Maybe that’s what the Giants are this season.

So now what? At least the Giants won’t lose next week since they enter the bye week.

With that said, how are things going to get better? This defense looks awful, and the quarterback continues to overthrow the ball.

The running game played well today, and it’s about time, but let’s not say everything is back on track with the running backs until they can perform consistently.

The coaching staff looks lost too. Kevin Gilbride has not gotten much out of his offensive unit all season, and Bill Sheridan fails to come up with plays that put his defensive unit in a position to be successful.

In the past, everyone criticized Coughlin until his team won the Super Bowl. But at some point, he needs to be held accountable for the team’s play this season. This team makes too many mental mistakes to be considered one of the league’s better teams, and it’s a reflection on the Giants head coach.

The players question themselves if they know how to win or play the game.

It was easy to shrug off that loss to the Saints few weeks ago since every team plays a bad game during the course of the season. But they’ve failed to bounce back since.

They’ve lost four in a row, and they’ve played awful in that stretch. When we see this consistently, it’s a trend.

Whatever they did in the first two months mean nothing anymore since they beat up on horrible teams that continues to get worse.

Before anyone can talk about the Giants as a playoff team, it would be nice to see them know how to play football.

 

 

 

 

 

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Nothing Goes Right for New York Giants These Days

Everyone anointed the Giants as the team to beat in the NFC after beating up on many bad teams in the schedule that put them at 5-0.

The team earned the benefit of the doubt by appearing in the postseason for the three straight years with a Super Bowl champion to show for it.

New Yorkers expected their NFC team to expose the Saints as frauds when their team came to the Bayou for the battle of undefeated teams. Instead, the joke is on the Giants.

Since the loss to the Saints, they looked awful on the field. They lost three straight, and it hasn’t been pretty either.

The Cardinals handled the Giants with ease by passing the ball at will towards that  soft defense, and yesterday, the Eagles did whatever they wanted when it came to running the ball and passing the ball.

Tom Coughlin ponders about the questions that plague his team right now.

Where is the defense? What happened to Eli Manning? Why can’t Brandon Jacobs and Ahmad Bradshaw run and break tackles?  Those three issues hurt the Giants right now.

When one thinks about the G-Men, they think hard-hitting defense. This is not happening right now with them.

They can’t blitz whatsoever, and opposing wide receivers torches the corner backs with no consequences of being pushed or punched.

The Giants dealt with injuries in September and October, but even then, everyone expects the team to not lose much with the depth they assembled. but it hasn’t happened at all.

Osi Umenyiora and Justin Tuck underachieved lately for whatever reason. Maybe Umenyiora knew what he was doing when he left the team for a day this summer after a tiff with Giants defensive coordinator Bill Sherdian.

Sheridan looks like he is out of his league in running a defense so far with the way the other team run their offensive sets. What we see now would never happen if Rams coach Steve Spagnuolo ran this unit.

We thought Manning’s problems of being inconsistent is over after a great playoff run in 2008 and a fine season last year, but that’s not the case. To quote Giants general manager Jerry Resse, the Giants quarterback looks skittish.

He throws interceptions these days, and he fails to throw deep to his receivers. A fan told this bystander that Manning’s knees are hurting him when we both watch the game at an appliance store.

If that’s the case, then the Giants are in trouble period. They need to hope Manning plays through the pain and finds a way to produce.

Jacobs and Bradshaw failed to play at their top level so far in these first two months of the season. They don’t run for much yardage, and they get stopped as soon as they run.

It’s mind-boggling to see how far they fallen off. It looks like those two’s career may be coming to an end at this point.

They can’t pinpoint what’s going on, and Jacobs has been on denial about his play by being defensive when a Giants beat writer questioned his performance few weeks ago.

Hard to believe it’s going to get better for those two.

In a competitive conference, the Giants may have a hard time of making the playoffs at this point if they continue to stumble, and there’s no guarantee it will get better with what’s going on with the team.

One thought it was just one game after the Giants played awful against the Saints, but it’s been two games in a row now.

Maybe it’s time for all of us to realize the Giants are not that good.

 

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Mangini Looks Overmatched So Far

Randy Lerner probably wonders what he was thinking when he hired Eric Mangini as the Browns coach without interviewing several other candidates.

With the way this season is spiraling out of control, who can blame him?

Nothing has gone right for the Browns under Mangini’s leadership so far. The Browns not only are winless, but teams have outscored the Browns 95-43 in three games.

The team looks unprepared and outcoached.

The Browns are devoid of talent, but it says something about the first-year head coach when his team quits early in the season while said coach tries to instill a winning culture.

It’s amazing why Mangini was hired days after being fired by the Jets.

Lerner talked about wanting an experienced coach to lead his team, but he should have done his due diligence and found out why Mangini was fired before making the decision to hire him.

The former Jets coach assembled a good record in his three years there, but there was controversy about him as a head coach that cost him his job.

The Jets players quit on him in December. Sure Brett Favre stunk, but it’s not like the team played for the head coach’s job down the stretch either.

Mangini often looked lost on the sidelines when teams scored on his team. Plus, he usually failed to make any adjustments in the second halves of games.

When writers asked him questions pertaining to what went wrong in a game, he danced around them. It was plain to see he had no clue what he was doing.

The Jets clearly don’t miss their former head coach. They are 3-0, and they feel liberated from Mangini’s iron-first approach.

Mangini likes to act like a tough guy by handing out fines to players and playing mind games with his players. He’s a Bill Belichick wannabe.

That’s all well and good, but he doesn’t have the cache whatsoever.

So far, Mangini messed up in lot of areas as Browns coach.

He decided to take away the murals of former Browns greats. Only he knows why he wanted to do that.

Then, he forced rookies and training camp invitees to go on a bus ride to help participate in his youth camp when they shouldn’t have to.

Finally, he screwed up the quarterback position. He needed to be decisive right away by naming either Brady Quinn or Derek Anderson when training camp started.

Quarterbacks need time to work with the offensive line, receivers and the running backs. That’s what training camp is for.

It’s no coincidence the Browns look lost on offense early on based on what Mangini did.

Now, Mangini panics by changing quarterbacks.

What did he expect out of Quinn?

Anderson is not the answer. He did not have a good season last year, and odds are what he did two years ago was a fluke.

If Anderson was good, how come teams never sought his services when they had quarterback issues?

Quinn will not develop if he’s going to be treated like a yo-yo by an anal coach.

Odds are Quinn needs a trade if he wants to be a successful quarterback.

A coach can do nothing but lose his team by acting the way Mangini has.

The way things are going for him, he probably did.

The rest of this season should be interesting. If the Browns muster two wins, Mangini should fret about losing his job.

Lerner may have no choice to fire him. How could things get better if Mangini loses his whole team?

Based on what we’ve seen so far, the hiring was a mistake.

Mangini was better off taking time off to reflect on his mistakes from his tenure with the Jets and latching on with a proven head coach to from.

Instead, Mangini may have gotten worse as head coach by being hired so soon.

Mangini needs to hope Lerner does not give up on him after one year.

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