Keidel: Jets Vs. Giants? Ha, Rex Can't Even Pull Geno Without Permission
By Jason Keidel
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It's too easy. I could spend this slice of cyberspace reminding Jets fans of all the unprintable nouns they called me when I said the Giants would have a better season than their beloved Gang Green.
At 0-1 I was a fool. At 0-2 I was to be fitted for chains and a padded room.
Now no one is laughing. Especially since Big Blue has righted the ship and Gang Green is plunging down the rungs of relevance. And they only have to contend with the hottest quarterback in the sport, Philip Rivers, followed by Peyton Manning and Tom Brady over the next few weeks.
My premise then and now is simple. The Giants are stable, a fixed totem pole where no one is jostling for all the credit or the glory. The Jets, by contrast, have fatal holes in their hierarchy. Rex Ryan just said he doesn't have the authority to change quarterbacks, for goodness sake. He works for a GM who can't wait to get rid of him and crippled the team by leaving $20 million in cap space on the table this year.
And while it sounds like I ascribe to Jerry Krause's corporate coda that organizations win championships, I believe In a hybrid form in football. You need stability among the three-pronged leadership of owner, coach, and quarterback. And the big three from Big Blue are in absolute lockstep, and have been for a decade. It doesn't assure dynasties, but it's always allergic to the soap operatic mess the Jets have been for decades.
Sure, we can bang on Geno Smith. He's a turnover factory who's shown no palpable signs of progress. And I led the conga line calling for Michael Vick to start the season. But Smith is a symptom. When the head coach says he hasn't the autonomy to bench his frazzled quarterback, then the team is doomed.
And don't we think that $20 million could have gotten Smith some help? Why would GM John Idzik pocket that kind of quid when the Jets are clearly so anemic at skill positions and the secondary? You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to question the team's logic, particularly in the white hot media cauldron of New York.
Maybe Idzik feels he can't fire Ryan directly, so he guts the coach from within, which also speaks to rampant dysfunction. One thing all successful teams have is a shared vision and commitment to their individual jobs, unaware or unaffected by the next person. An organization is an organism. And the Jets are diseased.
Just look at their history. Since Joe Namath the Jets' record reads like an EKG -- good, then bad, then pretty good, then awful. When the Giants get their shot they draft Lawrence Taylor, Michael Strahan, and Eli Manning. The. Jets pluck Blair Thomas, Vernon Gholston, and Mark Sanchez. When they draft winning players like Keyshawn Johnson and Darrelle Revis, they trade them. And they are still searching for the next Broadway Joe, nary one franchise QB since.
The Jets have been occasionally unlucky. The one time they finally got it right and hired Bill Parcells, came within 30 minutes of a Super Bowl, and entered the next season poised to bag a title, their QB snaps his Achilles' tendon, rendering the season a sorry tale of failed potential. But that's not a reason to spend the next 15 years looking up at the elite.
So naturally the Giants were the choice between our two local teams. We're so rabid over one week, one game, one play, that we forget the historical verities of sports and of life. As mundane as the corporate clichés sound during the week, they bear predictable and profitable fruit on Sundays.
The Giants aren't perfect, nor are they the NFL's preeminent franchise. But when you go 4-1 in the Super Bowl since 1986, you're a lot closer than a team that hasn't been to one since 1969. And the reasons for that disparity are rather facile. It starts at the top and trickles down. And since the Jets are headless, they make for a bloody mess.
Follow Jason on Twitter at @JasonKeidel
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