2013 Jets: Rex back for 2014
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Shelterdog said:
I forgot about this part, and only in Tannys world does this make sense. Shackle yourself to an awful QB for 3 years just to save $6.5M in cap space
I don't know about least talented, but 5-5 with Geno as a QB is definitely overachieving just as going to the playoffs and winning in the playoffs with Sanchez as a QB was also overachieving. But that's the conundrum -- I hate Rex because he's everything I hate about the Jets, but I give him total kudos for getting his teams to play hard and his defensive game plans: reading about what they did to Brees 2 weeks ago, for example, is really impressive.
But like his dad being a great motivator and a great DC does not mean he's a guy you think can take you to the top. He seemingly offers nothing on offense except making poor choices on picking and developing QBs and an out of date "ground and pound" mantra. And, as great a motivator as he is, his teams also seem to follow his emotional rollercoaster. So it's not to take anything away from him to say that, at the same time, were I in Idzik's shoes I'd still fire him.
But like his dad being a great motivator and a great DC does not mean he's a guy you think can take you to the top. He seemingly offers nothing on offense except making poor choices on picking and developing QBs and an out of date "ground and pound" mantra. And, as great a motivator as he is, his teams also seem to follow his emotional rollercoaster. So it's not to take anything away from him to say that, at the same time, were I in Idzik's shoes I'd still fire him.
This summarizes my feelings on Rex better than I could communicate, except I would keep the guy. Rex is a coach with warts, most coaches in the NFL have warts. Rex is probably elite defensively. There are a lot of coaches with warts that arent elite coaches on either side of the ball. Ergo, chances are you wont do better than Rex
Pretend for a second the Jets lost the two games that were given to them by the officials - the opener to Tampa and the second Pats game. They would be sitting at 3-7 with a minus-94 or so point differential. In that case, would anyone argue for keeping Rex?
That said, credit to him for keeping his team close in a bunch of the games they have won, plus the first Pats game which they lost 13-10. I think he is definitely an elite defensive coach. But that may prevent him from ever spending enough on the offensive groceries in order to truly compete for a championship - he is too concerned about fielding an elite defensive unit to devote enough resources to the other side of the ball.
That said, credit to him for keeping his team close in a bunch of the games they have won, plus the first Pats game which they lost 13-10. I think he is definitely an elite defensive coach. But that may prevent him from ever spending enough on the offensive groceries in order to truly compete for a championship - he is too concerned about fielding an elite defensive unit to devote enough resources to the other side of the ball.
Tony C said:
I'm sorry but you've made my argument for me. If Rex had a great QB, he'd be a great HC. There would be no question of whether Rex is a "guy who can take you to the top". With an all-time turd at QB, he coached his way to two AFC title games. With an all-time turd. Now, with a turnover machine, rookie QB who has just a little bit overblown sense of how good he is (see the GIF from week one), he has one of the least talented rosters in the NFL in contention for a playoff berth. He consistently outperforms expectations, given the talent he is handed.
Rex is GOOD. Give him an average QB (say, Andy Dalton) or a tick above-average (like say, Ben Roethlisberger) and he's winning Super Bowls because he's proven to be one of the five best defensive coaches in the NFL. He consistently has very good to excellent defenses. Yeah, he's shit on offense but part of that is QB and part is draft/personnel issues.
I hope the JETS fire him because he's consistently given the Patriots their toughest games each year and if he ever lucks into a 6th round gem, he's gonna prove the doubters wrong. Rex is good. 5-5 with a rookie fuckwad at QB and the least talented roster in the NFL.
Another hypothetical: if Geno wasn't a rookie, wouldn't we be saying he is just as bad as (if not worse than) Sanchez? Sanchez was treated with kid gloves during basically his entire tenure; wonder how long a leash they will give Geno. 16 interceptions plus 7 fumbles in 10 games is really bad.
You're attacking a straw man if you say I don't think he's GOOD. He's very good. I think it comes down to Wutang's response to my post -- I can see the argument that a guy who can get his team to overachieve (but, it should be said, also underachieve -- per their collapses and blow-outs) is better than a lot of the mediocrities in the league. That's why I think this is a tough decision for Idzik.
But saying he's good, very good even, isn't to say he's a coach you think can take you to the promised land. He's a crash and burn guy. Obviously this is from the pov of a Pats fan and maybe the implicit BB standard is too high a bar, but I don't think the Rex rollercoaster is a long term winner.
But saying he's good, very good even, isn't to say he's a coach you think can take you to the promised land. He's a crash and burn guy. Obviously this is from the pov of a Pats fan and maybe the implicit BB standard is too high a bar, but I don't think the Rex rollercoaster is a long term winner.
I can't defend the turnovers, but Smith at least makes plays - his 7.1 YPA is right around league-average, about the same as Ryan and Luck, and half-a-yard better than Brady. Sanchez was a turnover machine, too, but never averaged more than 6.7 YPA, and last year was at 6.4. And Geno's receivers are probably even worse than Sanchez' - no Keller, a hobbled Holmes, Hill the only WR who's played every game, etc. Still, Smith's play is on the whole unacceptable, and if he's still doing this next year or the year after it'll be clear he's a bust.tims4wins said:
This is exactly my stance. I'm not blind to RR's flaws, but the good outweighs the bad IMO.wutang112878 said:
As far as an all-one-side-of-the-ball coaching analogy, how about Sean Payton? He's famously involved in the play-to-play playcalling, which would seem to leave little time to involve himself with the D, which has mostly been terrible in his tenure. But the Saints were able to win a Super Bowl with that formula when they got some decent defensive performance.
soxfan121 said:
Or maybe Sanchez would have been an average (or better) QB if he had a different coach and played in a different system.
I also think the Jets are much, much more talented as of today than you think they are, in particular in the defensive front seven. They're bad but they're not Jags/Raiders shitty. Plus they've been reasonably healthy so even if coming into the season you thought they were worse than, for example, the Rams or Browns, well the tables have turned.
Tony C said:
Hey, you're the guy who advocated firing him. Please forgive me for mistaking "I'd still fire him" as as judgement that precluded "very good". So, he's very good but you'd fire him because of "the rollercoaster" and a supposed inability to take you to "the promised land".
Rex has never had a top-15 QB. He has had success with guys who are objectively, demonstrably awful at QB. IMO, without quality QB play any coach can be Belichick in Cleveland. All I do know is that Rex churns out good to great defenses and had several teams overachieve their talent level, winning more than he should. That's not a guy *I'd* fire and I think that's good to very good performance.
I think far too much analysis of Rex has to do with Buddy and that standard is both unfair and irrelevant.
Shelterdog said:
Doubtful on Sanchez, given what we all knew from Carroll pre-draft, but OK.
The Jets might have the top two players in pure talent if you pooled all those rosters but I think the 20-53 players on the Jags and Raiders are far, far better than the Jets. The Jets were gutted by Tannebaum's mismanagement. And they're not getting a top 5 draft pick (and maybe the Raiders aren't either), which factors into the "if this job were open, how much talent is on the roster?" analysis. YMMV.
Stitch01 said:
That he's a top five defensive coach in the NFL? Or that if he had an average-or-better QB, he'd be able to win Super Bowls? The former is, IMO, not worth arguing - if he's not top 5, he's absolutely top 6 over the past decade. The latter is the "without Brady, Belichick has no HC rings" argument writ Rex.
Super Nomario said:
Paytons a great example. For all his offensive genius, he does next to nothing to help the defense. Now he has Rob and he is getting great results and he has a good working model while being hands off on defense.
I wonder what things would be like if he didnt find Williams or Ryan, and Nick Saban decides to go with the bad shoulder (Drew Brees) over the bad knee (Dante Culpepper)? I bet Payton has a lot more warts in that scenario.
That describes Mike McCarthy as well. I think its a perfectly viable formula for winning a Super Bowl.Super Nomario said:
Interestingly, the Saints under Sean Payton have done the complete reverse of the Jets' draft strategy we previously discussed - they've now used six of their last seven #1s on defense. Maybe the thinking is that the offense is really Brees and Payton and that they can find enough pieces later in the draft and in FA (Sproles, for example) to keep things humming, so they can then afford to use their biggest draft chits building up the talent on defense. They've also simply hit on some great offense players later in the draft (Nicks and Graham most notably). So maybe the lesson is that if you have a genius head coach who is almost assuredly going to make one side of the ball look at least decent, don't also use all your first rounders on that side of the ball. Or maybe that's just easier to do with offense because if your QB is good enough, lots of other warts can be covered up in a way that's not possible on defense. Or maybe there's no lesson here other than that you have draft well to win in the NFL, which is not exactly a surprise to anybody.
Morgan's Magic Snowplow said:
The difference between the Saints (or the Pats, who also kind of sucked on defense for a few years in there) and the Jets is that the Saints and Pats saw they sucked on one side of the ball and aggressively tried to improve their defenses while the Jets kind of treaded water. The saints shuffled defensive coordinators (and have gone with three very highly touted guys in a row), used high draft picks, spent real money on curtis lofton, moved from a 4-3 to a 3-4 and now they seem to have gotten it. The Pats have been using a ton of high picks, traded for Talib, moved to a 4-3, and also seem to have made strides.
I don't see the same sort of concentrated effort to improve or restructure by the Jets. Their MO has been to just keep everyone and (other than Holmes) tinker a bit by replacing a couple of players who are retiring or going to free agency with cheap veterans and fairly late draft picks. It's pretty hard to imporve a shitty offense if all you're going to do is use the same guys over and over and just hope that a Plaxico or a LDT or a Hill or a Ducasse or a Tebow makes contributions way in excess of what you'd expect based on draft or contract status.
They're spending a ton of money on the offensive side of the ball - $15 MM more than on defense, and 4 of their 6 biggest cap figures are offensive players. I think the problem isn't so much that they haven't tried to address the offense as that they've been philosophically top-heavy and their offensive moves have been big swings-and-misses.Shelterdog said:
soxfan121 said:
Not sure why you have problems with a guy being good but also needing to be fired. It's the equivalent of should the Bears extend Jay Cutler with a Flacco-like contract or move on? Cutler is good, even very good, but perhaps not the guy who'll take you to the SB. You can say a guy is good or even very good but still not want to hitch your wagon to him -- probably the easiest equivalent is in the NBA...there are all sorts of very good players who are not worth a max contract. Rex is a good coach, but not one I want leading my team into the future.
And, after saying a lot of nice things about Rex, I think you're crazy if you put him in the top rung of NFL coaches [edit: mis-read your post]. He's basically been a .500 coach with very talented teams except at the QB position. He worked with a GM who gave him a big role in running the show and spent max and over the max -- mortgaging the Jets future -- to get Rex the groceries he wanted. That he didn't have a good QB is a cop-out: he was key to selecting that QB and developing that QB and fully and quite emotionally supported that QB to the degree that he didn't want his GM to bring in a viable back-up because he didn't want to threaten that QB. The Jets were talent-laden for several years and with a game manager QB could have done much better than the .500-ish/barely sneak into the Wild Card records they had. That's on Ryan every bit as much as it's on BB that he dumped Bledsoe for Brady. Since when is talent evaluation and making cold-eyed decisions not a part of a coach's job? Your "where is BB without Brady" argument is, precisely, an indictment of Rex -- where is Rex if he correctly scouted and/or developed Sanchez? Where is Rex if he demanded a Josh McCown sort of guy as a back-up/competitor to Sanchez?
Rex is what he is: basically a .500 coach with real strengths and weaknesses. I'd take him any day as a DC and I'd take him any day as a HC for a team like the Jags that just wants to scratch its way into relevance. But if I'm GM of a team that wants to win a Super Bowl, it'd be a tough decision but I'd have to hope I could do better elsewhere.
I don't think you're wrong here, but I think 90% of NFL teams would have done the same thing. Sam Bradford is on his fourth year in St. Louis with no competition (in fact his backup is Sanchez' old backup Kellen Clemens). JaMarcus didn't get a fourth year, but he's an all-time bust, not a mere crappy player. Vince Young got five years in Tennessee, though I guess they had a reasonable plan B in Kerry Collins. Alex Smith got 7 years in San Francisco, and the first five he was pretty bad. David Carr got five years in Houston. Joey Harrington got four in Detroit. Top-five rookies making $10 MM a year get four years as a starter provided they show anything. With the rookie contracts players get now, it'll be easier to move on from mistakes like this, but it was really hard to do so under the old CBA.Shelterdog said:
Off topic for a moment: Vince Young actually played well his last two seasons with the Titans--at least when he was on the field. He was driven out of town due to his injuries and his "whacky" personality, not his play on the field.
As to Rex, put me in the more bad than good camp. Rex at least brings one elite skill to the table. That's more than you can say for most coaches in the league.
To succeed as a HC in the longterm, he's going to have to learn to be the Coach/CEO, not the DC and chief cheerleader.
As to Rex, put me in the more bad than good camp. Rex at least brings one elite skill to the table. That's more than you can say for most coaches in the league.
To succeed as a HC in the longterm, he's going to have to learn to be the Coach/CEO, not the DC and chief cheerleader.
Super Nomario said:
My point is that Rex and the Jets didn't drastically changed anything on offense despite having shitty offenses and instead committed to keeping a crapbum offense's star players (Mangold, Sanchez, Holmes, Ferguson), while the Pats and Saints did a million different things--everything from trades to coaching changes to spending lots off money to cutting pro bowlers to implementing bounty systems- to try and improve their shitty defenses. Now continuity might be the answer (Walsh always said it was on offense) but it's certainly a different approach.
I don't think they didn't do anything. I think they did stupid, bad things:Shelterdog said:
2009: Mega-trade/contract for Sanchez, drafted Greene in the 3rd
2010: Trades for Holmes, Edwards, signed Tomlinson, drafted Ducasse in the second
2011: Signed Derrick Mason
2012: New OC (Sparano), drafted Hill in the 2nd
2013: New OC (Mornhinweg), drafted Smith in the 2nd, signed Ivory, Goodson, Colon
A lot of these moves don't look like big moves in hindsight because the players were so unproductive. Mason did nothing for them and was traded after 5 games, but he was coming off an 800-yard season in Baltimore. They traded a 3rd for Braylon Edwards. The last couple years they've been in cap hell (largely due to ill-advised contracts to guys like Sanchez, Holmes, and David Harris) that have kept them from doing a lot, but they've still done stuff. The main issue I see is that they've preferred splashy name players without regard for age (Tomlinson, Mason) or headcase-ness (Holmes, Edwards).
EDIT: also, I'm not sure how much to blame Rex for these personnel moves. I think he stumped for some of them (Mason in particular) but I would think the majority would be laid at Tannenbaum's feet.
Super Nomario said:
Based on what, exactly? What I mean is, if we assume that all the mistakes are Tanny's it's kind of tautalogical to even do an assessment, right?
Super Nomario said:
I think we're just arguing about semantics. I think the Jets made relatively few important changes on offense and the Pats (and Saints) made a lot more on defense, but what's an important or drastic change is subject to debate.
This is what I wrote:PedroKsBambino said:
I'm not sure how you read "I'm not sure how much to blame Rex," "I think he stumped for some of them" and "I would think the majority" and concluded my position was "all the mistakes are Tanny's."Super Nomario said:
Super Nomario said:
Because that is what you've described in the last few pages...the QB is not his fault, the lack of offensive talent is not his fault, and the 'majority of the bad FAs' are not his fault either. All without any real explanation of why one would conclude so. The net of that is to suggest the GM is to blame, isn't it? Or 'anyone but Rex' at a minimum. That is possible of course (we don't have much visibility) but seems somewhat of a heroic assumption to me.
"We don't have much visibility" is right. Since Tannenbaum was the GM and Rex the coach (in contrast to the Pats' organization where Belichick is the authority and Caserio does not have the GM title), in theory Tannenbaum was the ultimate authority when it comes to personnel matters. Of course, the real world can be more complicated, and the Jets aren't exactly a model of high-functioning organization.PedroKsBambino said:
To the extent Rex has been involved in the poor personnel decisions the Jets have made, that can be addressed by stripping him of personnel decision-making authority. There's a reason few head coaches around the league have final authority over personnel matters. When I say I think Rex is a good head coach, I mean that I think he's good at taking the roster he has and winning games with it. I'm not advocating Ryan as a Coach/GM hybrid a la Belichick or Bill Walsh.
My position has been that Rex is a good but flawed head coach who needs help on the offensive end (both coaching and personnel) to get to the next level. If he's unwilling to accept that help, he should be fired.
Not really clear why the Jets are sticking with Smith -- they are in position for the wild card, if they've pulled him twice already, not sure what the harm is in pulling him for a 3rd time. And sure would give them a better shot at winning.
Attended today's game. That the Jets are 5 and 6 is a testament to Rex's coaching chops because that was not a professional offense on the field today in Baltimore. And you cannot blame the conditions, which were cold and windy but will pale in comparison to what you'll see in NE tonight.
There was so little confidence in Smith that for huge portions of the same -- including portions with the wind at their backs -- that the Jets did not even try to move the ball. Once Flacco threw the TD, game over.
There was so little confidence in Smith that for huge portions of the same -- including portions with the wind at their backs -- that the Jets did not even try to move the ball. Once Flacco threw the TD, game over.
dcmissle said:
Rex has done a very good job keeping the ship afloat, but I think it's really a team with a 3-8 overall talent, if you consider the roster outside of the front 7 and not just the QB.
Also, here's the totally expected TGG after the debacle by Geno:
It makes it all the more frustrating that these fools play the Patriots so well and cost them a loss.
They're a horrible football team.
I love knowing that Jets fans were elated with the Pats scored at the half and then saw that elation disappear.
I love knowing that Jets fans were elated with the Pats scored at the half and then saw that elation disappear.
Unless we see a substantial change in Geno's play, I don't see how the Jets can do anything except draft another QB in the first couple rounds next year. His ball protection is staggeringly bad (much worse than Sanchez ever was), his accuracy is mediocre, and he always seems to have awful body language when things are going poorly. They don't have a lot of money invested in him and I really see no reason to give him more leash than the right to play this whole season and then compete for a job next year with a better prospect.
Agreed. If the Jets are smart they'll give Geno the Jimmy Clausen treatment.Morgan's Magic Snowplow said: