New York Jets

Happy Wednesday friends.  As I write this on Tuesday night, I am feeling a bit better, and expecting to be back in my office tomorrow.  Once again, I worked from home today, and started to feel better as the day went on.  I haven't sneezed in awhile, and even went to a Chamber of Commerce networking event for a little while earlier (which is hilarious, if you're familiar with my political leanings.)  

Anyway, I promised some content for today, and content you shall have.  First, I'll start with some thoughts and observations from the two games from Sunday.

1.  New York Jets at Indianapolis Colts 

a.  I lauded the Austin Collie pick when it happened last April, and he's made me (and Bill Polian) look smart.  He's very reliable, and I was almost shocked when he dropped the first pass thrown to him Sunday.  I think Collie's combination of fluidness and precision in his routes are already near the top of the NFL for slot receivers.  I think he's a more sturdily built, quicker version of Brandon Stokley, and I expect him to have an excellent and long career.

b.  Speaking of previously unheralded Colts WRs, how about Pierre Garcon?  He was fantastic Sunday, but I have to clear up an uncommon misconception about him.  Well, it's more like a misconception about his college.  Mount Union College is a perennial Division III powerhouse, and is located in Alliance, Ohio.  Alliance is about 20 miles east of Canton, and is notable for being the site of the historic wedding after-party where I picked up my first woman out of a bar, 2 weeks after getting legally divorced.  (She's a co-worker of the groom, and we ended up dating for a few months last summer; she's the one who broke up with me during halftime of the Hall of Fame game last August, freeing me up to write a lot of words for MHR.)

Anyway, Rich Eisen was saying on TV that Mount Union is in New Jersey, near the Jets facility.  Not so much, Rich.

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Happy Monday, friends, and welcome to The Mothership.  We've got a couple more teams going fishing, and we'll explore their situations.  We'll also devote some early thought to the Super Bowl matchup.  Finally, since the Senior Bowl is this week, we'll get into that a little bit, and possibly also consider the less important Pro Bowl.  The NFC Championship game isn't over yet, as I start writing this, but I want to get a couple thousand words written before midnight.  Ready..... BEGIN!!!

1.  Both championship games were very interesting on Sunday, after the first two weekends had a lot of blowouts, and a few uninteresting close games.  I would venture to say that the only entertaining game in the first two weeks was Arizona vs. Green Bay.  It was a good Football Sunday, and we'll start by thinking about the losers.

a.  New York Jets - First of all, let me reiterate that anybody who made it to their conference championship game had a good season.  That said, this was not the year New York planned to be in Super Bowl contention, so I think they were already playing with house money on Sunday.  They wanted to win, and I know they believed that they could, but they're still developing into what they ultimately want to become.

First things first, since the MSM will always focus on the QB position first.  Mark Sanchez generally has a ways to go as a decision maker, but he showed a lot of poise during the recent run, and it has to make Jets fans very excited for the future.  He had a good day on Sunday, and the two TD passes he threw each showed a quality that the elite QBs possess.  He showed outstanding touch on the deep ball on the first, and impressive toughness and accuracy under pressure on the second.  My concerns about his ability to play in bad weather aside, it's pretty clear that the Jets have their guy of the future.

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Happy Monday, friends, and welcome to The Mothership. After a pretty uninspiring Divisional Playoff round, we can only hope for more interesting games next week. I am incidentally re-writing about the first 1000 words because I clicked wrong button, and lost my work. CKEditor needs a save feature.

Anyway, let’s get to getting this big red ship underway. Somebody give me a push away from the pier in the port of Echo Chamber. Ready…. BEGIN!!!!

Happy Tuesday, friends. We're getting down to having fewer games, obviously, so I am getting less "call it like I see it" opportunities. On top of that, I had to re-allocate some time to snow removal tonight. That was a hoot. We'll see where we come out against the backdrop of "Ted was 90 minutes late to work today, and is aiming to get enough sleep tonight to ensure a reasonable expectation of timeliness tomorrow."

Wild Card Weekend -

1. New York Jets at Cincinnati Bengals

a. First things first. Michael Lombardi evidently agrees with me, but I have been saying this in various forms for two years. Carson Palmer cannot be considered a franchise QB anymore. He was on his way to being one before the knee and elbow injuries, but he's never going to get there. The velocity on his throws outside the numbers is way, way down. He can still be a solid starter, but he isn't what he's made out to be. It's no accident that the Bengals finally started having success when they decided to rely heavily on the running game.

b. Cedric Benson is a great player, and he's just hitting the prime of his career. I've beaten on the Bengals for ignoring character red flags before, and for liking bargains, but they sure came up with gold in taking a chance on Benson. The Bengals ought to get a reliable #2 RB, split the carries 75-25, and run the hell out of the ball, from a variety of personnel groupings and formations. Benson is one of the few contemporary backs in the NFL whom I'd want to use like a true workhorse.

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Happy Monday, friends, and welcome the Mothership. We’re getting underway after an interesting week, and there’s lots to talk about. We’ll get into some coaching matters, and talk about the Wildcard weekend that was, and the Divisional weekend that will be.

I’m happy, because we’re done closing December at my day job, so I’ll have more time to devote to this site for the next few weeks. I’m working on some video stuff, as I’ve previously mentioned, and I want to write a couple more articles this week than I was able to last week.

No time to waste, so let’s not waste any time. The lines are cast off, we’re pulling away from the Echo Chamber pier, and heading for the open ocean. Ready….. BEGIN!!!!

1. Black Monday wasn’t so black this season, and I didn’t really expect it to be. With a better than (Bill Williamson Memorial) decent chance of a chance of a lockout in 2011, owners have to be planning for expense minimization, based on the risk of the major reduction to their revenue streams that would go with a lockout.

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Happy Monday, friends, and welcome to the official launch of SmarterFans.com.  I mentioned that some changes were afoot to the old formula that you've known for a year, which was called Shallow Thoughts & Nearsighted Observations.  So begins the beginning of that, which I have decided to call The Mothership.  I'll be talking about details as we get going here, and without further ado, (not adieu) let's get it on and popping like Orville Redenbacher.  Ready.... BEGIN!!!

1.  See, not everything has changed.  On Mondays, we'll still get ready before we begin.  I actually want to start by thanking my longtime friend Jessica Blaze for spending a few hours helping me build some pages for this site on Saturday.  The result of that work is the menu item marked NFL Team Pages, which are a work in progress, but so is the whole site.  Jessica is actually the person who got me saying Ready.... BEGIN years ago, so she's been a part of every ST&NO, whether y'all ever realized it or not.  She has a user ID here, which is, fittingly, readybegin.

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I am writing this pre-launch, to accomplish a few tasks, actually, but I hope it's a value-adding piece of content, and not just a throwaway for taxonomy building's sake.  I was talking to my father over Christmas about coaching trees, and their associated ideologies, and it struck me as something worth exploring, and writing about.  For all 32 teams, each coach came from somewhere, and learned distinguishable strategies and schematic ideas.  We're going to look at each team, and try to make some sense of this landscape.

Buffalo Bills -- Perry Fewell (Interim Coach)

Fewell comes from the tree of the man he replaced, Dick Jauron, and has worked for him for years, in Jacksonville, Chicago, and Buffalo.  He worked for Mike Martz and Lovie Smith in St. Louis too, but that's a secondary relationship.  It's a little bit tough to place Fewell, because it's tough to place Jauron.  Jauron worked for Hank Bullough (a key figure in 3-4 history), Lindy Infante, Mike Holmgren, and Tom Coughlin.  That's 4 totally unrelated coaching philosophies there.  I'm going to have to decline to declare Jauron as being part of any tree, because his roots go so many different directions, and say that Fewell is not part of a specific tree either.

Miami Dolphins -- Tony Sparano

There's no question that Sparano comes from the Bill Parcells Tree.  He worked briefly for Chris Palmer in Cleveland, Marty Schottenheimer in Washington, and Tom Coughlin in Jacksonville, but his career took off when Parcells hired him in Dallas in 2003.  Parcells, of course, continues to be his boss in Miami.  This one is a no-brainer.

New York Jets -- Rex Ryan

He worked under Brian Billick and Mike Nolan for a lot of years, and under Jim Harbaugh for one, but Ryan seems to be most influenced by his father Buddy.  He isn't particularly related to many other coaches in the NFL nowadays, and his approach to defense is very original.  I'll give his dad, Buddy, his own Buddy Ryan Tree, because another branch or two will hit there as well.

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