Three Things The Jets Need To Address First
So the Jets season ended with a win on Sunday giving them a 4-12 record on the season and pushing their draft pick a couple of slots lower down in the order. Here’s a quick look at issues that will need attention in the next few weeks (pre-draft) before what promises to be a very busy offseason kicks into high gear.
- The first thing that needs to be taken care of is the coaching staff. There have been rumors around the last several weeks that once the season ended and Dick Vermeil retired from coaching Jets Head Coach Herman Edwards would go to Kansas City to succeed him. Edwards’ close relationship with members of the Chiefs front office is the motivation of these rumors. Edwards has denied the rumors and said that he will be back with the Jets next year. But where there’s smoke there’s fire so this one will not go away until the Chiefs hire a coach. The Jets need this resolved quickly since it’s a distraction that could disrupt other things that need to get done. Such as…
- A decision on John Abraham must be made. Abraham, the teams best defensive lineman and a main cog to their defense, has been hit with the franchise tag the last couple of years as a way to get around locking him into a long term deal. This irked Abraham so much that he sat out training camp this past summer. But even without camp he managed to stay healthy and end the season with 58 tackles and 10.5 sacks. This man clearly need to be signed to a deal that it longer than just 1 year. Whatever the team does it’s in their best interest to get it done quickly so they can remove yet another distraction and know if they need to acquire another lineman for next year or not.
- A decision needs to be made on the quarterback situation. Chad Pennington did too much too soon after his last surgery and paid the ultimate price of sitting out the final 13 games of the season while having another surgery. Though a tremendous leader he has not proved he can be a top flight championship caliber NFL quarterback since he has not managed to stay healthy for a full season since becoming a starter. Brooks Bollinger did well enough this season to prove to everyone that he’s a capable NFL backup. bt make no mistake about it. Any team that has Bollinger as their no. 1 is in trouble. My thought would be to draft a good QB (if one is available to them) and start breeding him for the future. In this scenario Bollinger will be the clear no. 2 and Pennington the starter. The hope would be that by the next time the Pennington gets injured the rookie QB will be ready enough for significant game action with Bollinger getting some playing tiem as well. This would also push Pennington to do the things he has to do to stay healthy.
In my mind these are the things that need to be taken care of first. But along the way there are other questions that will come up. As far as Edwards goes do you really want him as your coach? (Though I’ve been a fan of his in the past I’m critical of him this year because I feel he lost some of his edge and began to coach not to lose as opposed to coaching to win. I don’t care how bad your team may be or how many of your starters are injured you still need to coach to win.) In the case of Abraham do you want to upset him again by tagging him as the franchise player again? And the QB situation has a million questions attached to it. Either way these thinsg will need to be settled as soon as possible if the offseason will be productive for this team.
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Jets need a placekicker. Should use their first draft choice.