The Jets Opt For The Easy Excuse

'Your expectations are about here, I need you to be about (lowers hand) (lower) here...(lower)

New York Jets coach Rex Ryan held a press conference today to tell the world he’s selected rookie Mark Sanchez to start at QB.  Everyone is assuming this is the real deal, but I don’t know that Ryan is that trustworthy considering he’s also said that he’s been losing weight recently.

If Sanchez is in fact the opening day starter, congratulations are in order.  He’s proven himself to be a more competent quarterback than Kellen Clemens and his 59.3 career QB rating and Eric Ainge and his hate mail signed by Phil Fulmer.  He’s also proven to be a ready-made excuse for his first time head coach when the team inevitably struggles.

Starting a rookie QB is the best PR move an NFL team can make.  It immediately brings expectations down and buys the coaching staff a year to put the pieces together.  Being in New York, Ryan had to understand that fans would be calling for his head if the team couldn’t put together a winning season in his first year.  If he had decided to start Clemens, he’d have no shield from the intense scrutiny.  I mean, sane people like you or I would say Kellen Clemens at QB is a pretty good excuse for sucking, but crazy people in New York will use his 4-year veteran status to bury the franchise.

I’m not saying starting a rookie always leads to failure.  Baltimore and Atlanta both made the playoffs last year with first-year signal callers, but they also had first year head coaches who needed an out just in case things went sour.  I’m just saying that starting the rookie is win-win.  You can even try it in your own life to prove the point.  Tell people it’s your first day on the job when you screw up and watch the expectations diminish.  I’m pretty sure that’s how Matt Millen kept his job with the Lions for so long.  Obviously, it’s not going to work forever, but it buys you time to get it together or plan your next move.

And for the Jets, they can use this season to sell people on Sanchez’s potential.  If they do a good enough job with that, Sanchez can coast through his career with fans patiently waiting for him to mature.  As Jay Cutler has shown, it’s also a good idea to discover some sort of malady that may have diminished the player’s effectiveness at about year 3.  It’s like resetting the countdown to fans being fed up.

I hope you agree that the overall idea behind this post was solid, even if the execution was lacking something.  You’ll have to excuse me though, it’s my first day.

Tags: football, Kellen Clemens, Mark Sanchez, New York Jets, NFL, Rex Ryan

NY Jets Give Their Fans Something

Revealed he lost a passing contest to his center on Twitter...seriously

The New York Jets stunned the world in 1968 when they beat the Colts in Super Bowl III.  Since then, they’ve been returned to the big game fewer times than Joe Namath has hit on Suzy Kolber.  In fact, they’ve only made the AFC title game twice since then, losing in ‘82 and ‘98.  Now, the Jets are giving their fans something to cheer about besides Broadway Joe’s sobriety…are we cheering that now?  Really, but he’s so funny smashed…fine.  The franchise is encouraging players to use Twitter, clearly discouraging illiterate New Jerseyans from being fans in the process. 

The Jets roster currently features at least 11 players who regularly Twitter, including safety Kerry Rhodes, kicker Jay Feely and QB Mark Sanchez.  There are more than 80-thousand followers of Jets employees on Twitter, with half of those coming from Sanchez’s stream alone.  “That means that at any given moment, we can reach 80,000 fans directly,” said a Jets employee that clearly doesn’t fully understand Twitter.  If 40-thousand people are following Mark Sanchez, it stands to reason that most of those fans are also following the rest of the Jets.  What I’m saying is, unique followers and followers are two different groups…also, where do I send my resume to apply for that executive vice-president of business operations job. 

That same fellow, Matt Higgins, went on to say, “I just don’t see how you don’t embrace such a powerful tool.”  That’s actually a recycled quote from last season’s Brett Favre signing…ZING! 

This new pro-Twitter policy might actually be a backlash against the brief Brett Favre era in New York.  Encouraging tweets is really just a thinly veiled attempt to keep older players off the team.  Favre may know how to text, but I’m willing to bet that Twitter still scares and confuses him.  The same goes for many of the veterans of more than 12 seasons still hanging around the NFL. 

Maybe you disagree about that theory, but how else would you explain the Jets’ depth chart at QB?  They have Mark Sanchez, Kellen Clemens and Eric Ainge.  Don’t you think they would’ve signed someone more competent if age and Twitter weren’t factors?

Tags: football, Mark Sanchez, New York Jets, NFL

Fire Up The Douche Machine

Here Mark was finally rounding into the form that John David Booty never achieved… I don’t mean as a quarterback, I mean as a pretty, frat boy looking douche, and he up and leaves for the league.  Now Carroll will have to hope that back ups Mitch Mustain and Aaron Corp respond well to the douche cloning machine in the offseason or else the Trojans will be left with a potentially likable QB, and we all know they can’t win a championship that way. 

Ed. Note- No chance Corp makes the huge strides necessary and although Mustain has the attitude already and probably only needs a little hair gel, my money’s on dark horse incoming freshman Matt Barkley.  We haven’t seen douche potential like this since Jimmy Clausen signed on to destroy Notre Dame.

Now you may be saying, oh everyone is hating on USC these days, it’s so cliche and easy.  Yes it is, and fun too.  Sometimes you just gotta say “damn what people will think, I’ve gotta do what I love”.  Even if that has led to such travesties as Bruce Willis the singer, Charles Barkley the golfer and Paris Hilton the not a corpse.

Tags: Aaron Corps, Chris Mortensen, ESPN, Jimmy Clausen, John David Booty, Mark Sanchez, Matt Barkley, Mitch Mustain, NFL, Notre Dame, Pete Carroll, Shelley Smith, USC