Jets fans need to pause and reflect -- Doc's bark for Nov. 23, 2012

There's not much more to say that hasn't been said after Jets Nation vented its collective spleen while Gang Green got stuffed, roasted and carved by New England to the tune of 49-19 last night on prime time television.  We've tweeted our guts out, called in to join a still-ongoing bitch-a-thon on local sports radio stations, and stared at ESPN highlights over and over again like the Zapruder film, terribly ironic given yesterday was the 49th anniversary of JFK's assassination. But for all the wailing football fans and talking heads in the media are doing, I'm not hearing one iota of perspective among the emotional masses.

I know what many of you are probably thinking: Shut up, Dave... what the hell do you know about anything, much less professional football? You're just some idiot in wheelchair.

Well, if I'm an idiot in a wheelchair, what's Eric LeGrand? There! I can hit below the belt too, you know.  I don't care if it is Thanksgiving weekend... you can't have your cake and eat it too every time you want to create postulates to discredit anything I have to say. Either young Mr. LeGrand and I are both know-nothing idiots in wheelchairs, or we're both disabled human beings who became disabled as a consequence of playing football. I may not have played overly well during my day, but I actually know more about football than how to tie the laces of my cleats.

Don't mistake my admonishment for arrogance. I'm far from the smartest person on the planet, but I am blessed with a unique ability to gather, analyze and synthesize information while connecting it to the big picture and perspective, and I haven't heard much big picture thinking or perspective over the many hours of hysteria since last night's game kicked off.

Let's briefly talk about what we saw last night. Yes, the Jets stunk up the joint and were dead in the water before halftime. Most of us haven't seen a 35-point blitz in one quarter in a long time.  I share Al Michaels' personal memory of Super Bowl XXII when the Washington Redskins exploded for 35 points in what seemed like the blink of an eye and the Denver Broncos never knew what hit them. Last night was deja vu all over again for anyone with a head full of NFL (and AFL) history. That's what last night's second quarter was like, the train wreck of historical proportions you didn't realize was instantaneously happening before your very eyes.

Anyone who's played organized football at any level has been on the right and wrong end of such games... it's simply part of the law of averages.  Those games really aren't laughers to the team on the receiving end of a big-time butt kicking (see 2010, Patriots 45, Jets 3), or epic collapse. Last night NBC reminded us all about the great comebacks from 35-3 by the 1992 Buffalo Bills in a wild card playoff game against the Houston Oilers (Bill Belichick's personal justification for running up scores)  and the Jets own Miracle in the Meadowlands in 2000, coming all the way back from down 30-7 in the fourth quarter to beat the Miami Dolphins 40-37 in overtime at almost 2:00am. As we all know, I wore the uniform of the Temple Owls and Tampa Bay Buccaneers many years ago (queue in laugh track), so losing games by 30 or more points was pretty routine for me, and unfortunately, you can only play William and Mary so many times in order to see things from the brighter side of the scoreboard.

Do 49-19 losses bug me? Yeah... especially when the game matters, especially when my team losses 49-19 with a still-existing chance of making a wild card berth, especially when my team has already lost 34-0, 30-9 and 28-7 this season. Too many stinkers like this gives me indigestion, no matter what's on the dinner menu.

But what bugged me most was the cruel, uninformed, snarky, and disrespectful carrying on by my fellow Jets fans, members of the media and members of the football fraternity.  In fact, I'll go as far as saying that I haven't been as turned off my some people's comments since the masses ganged up on Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler during the 2010 NFC Championship Game when he went down with a knee injury that couldn't be treated without complicating his Type I Diabetes.  In short, I was a little ashamed by many of the comments many folks were tweeting and saying on radio, just like I was back in January 2011.

So how do we turn last night's Jets debacle into a teachable moment so we can all grow and learn from this as vested fans and supporters?

The first thing we can do is start learning how to use vocabulary properly.  Without calling out specific members of the media, one cannot call the Jets an "embarrassment" and "pretenders" in the same sentence.  These are two distinctly different words and they have two completely different meanings in the context of NFL parity.

To simplify things, there are four possible adjective categories one can use to describe an NFL team: dynastic, contender, pretender or embarrassment.  Here's a simple rule-of-thumb to follow when you use these terms:

1. A dynastic team is one that routinely wins NFL titles during an extended number of years, like an entire decade (see the 1960s Green Bay Packers, 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers and 1980s San Francisco 49ers).

2. A contender, or contending team is one that routinely wins their division during an extended number of years and at least plays in as many conference championship games (see the Dallas Cowboys of 1966-1982, the Oakland Raiders of 1967-1983, the Minnesota Vikings of 1969-1980, the Buffalo Bills of 1988-1999, and the New England Patriots since 1994).

3. A pretender is a team that routinely finishes at or above .500 during an extended number of years, occasionally making the playoffs, possibly even winning their division every now and then, and could go far if planets are aligned just right (see the New York Jets since 1997).

4. An embarrassment is a team that routinely finishes well below .500 during an extended number of years, where .500 is a very exceptional season and a playoff berth is a miracle (see the New Orleans Saints of 1967-1985, Tampa Bay Buccaneers of 1983-1996, and the Oakland Raiders since 2003).

Okay? Got it? Good.  Now, let's take a breath and look at our Jets with a critical and rational eye. For those carrying on that the 2012 Jets are the most embarrassing in franchise history, I should remind you that this franchise has been playing since 1960 when it was the AFL's New York Titans, a team that essentially went bankrupt under owner Harry Wismer. 

4-7 is embarrassing? 4-7 is lousy. Embarrassing is a different level of lousy. What about the 4-28 Rich Kotite era of 1995-1996, piggybacking the Fake Spike collapse of 1994 under Pete Carroll? What about the 9-33 Jets of 1975-1977 under the leadership of Charley Winner, Lou Holtz and Walt Michaels? I appreciate that many Jets fans think Super Bowl III and 1968 was as long ago as the Fall of Rome and so many young fans today feel personally persecuted for still waiting for a sniff of a Jets Super Bowl since the day Bill Parcells arrived at the old Hofstra facility, but you guys really have no idea what "bad old days" really mean in the history of this franchise.

Yes, this season has been a major letdown for Jets Nation and at times painful to watch, but having watched this team since 1966-1967, through great seasons and absolutely awful, and being on borrowed time with a morphine pump surgically implanted in my belly, I'm actually just happy to watch another season, even this 4-7 slop.  You bitch about when the Jets are going to make it back to the Super Bowl while I don't expect to live long enough to see a Super Bowl played in New Jersey. It's all relative, folks; get a damn grip on yourselves and smell some reality.

Fact: the 2012 Jets are having a very sub-par season in many respects. Fact: compared to the Patriots, the Jets are big-time pretenders, even with back-to-back AFC Championship Game appearances in 2009 and 2010. Fact: the Jets can really embarrass themselves on and off the field. Fact: the Jets are NOT an embarrassing football team.  This is a team that beat the Colts 35-9, hung 48 points on the Bills, and came close to upsetting the Texans at home and the Patriots on the road. Yes, this is also a team that has lost three home games to the 49ers, Dolphins and Patriots to the tune of 113-28. Hello?! When the Jets are going good, they can be very good, and when they're going bad, they go bad big.  No matter how you slice it, that's a sure sign of a very mediocre and maddingly inconsistent team, just like the other 16 teams that were at, just above or just below .500 going into Thanksgiving weekend. That's parity. Has the bottom fallen out on this team? Not if there's better than a cockeyed chance they can run the table and finish 9-7 in spite of themselves.

Fact: since the great Parcells graced Jets Nation with his presence in 1997, the Jets are an overall 132-121 with seven playoff berths, two AFC East crowns and three trips to the AFC Championship Game (1998, 2009-2010). Add in the 7-7 postseason record and the Jets are 139-128 since the stench of the Kotite era was removed. You know what that works out to, on average, for almost sixteen seasons? 9-7.  Yes, for all the physically-present head coaches the Jets have had -- Parcells, Al Groh, Herm Edwards, Eric Mangini and Rex Ryan -- and big-name stars on the roster, the Jets are basically a 9-7 team that makes the playoffs every few seasons and gives fans some added thrills to break the monotony.  Compared to the dark days of 1975-1977 and 1995-1996 (neither period representative of years in endless oblivion like other well-known and long-time NFL losers), sixteen years of "better than average" is pretty okay.  Compared to NFL organizations that are truly contenders or potential dynasties, the Jets have a long way to go before results back up constant talking. Think about it: since 1994, Bob Kraft's Patriots have six Super Bowl appearances, winning three, and that's on top of thirteen AFC East titles. Folks, the Patriots are what a contender looks like. The Jets are not. The Jets are a pretender unable to make the leap to contender status.

How do the Jets make that leap from sixteen years (or perhaps even four decades) of being a pretender to a sustained run as a bonafide NFL contender? Change ownership? Change the front office? Change the head coach? Change the coaching staff? Change the quarterback? Change the entire roster? Relocation to the NFC? All of the above? None of the above?

How about changing the overall perspective about the organization? Yes, more than forcing Woody Johnson to sell the team to someone less distracted by GOP politics, replacing Mike Tannenbaum as GM, Rex Ryan as head coach, or Mark Sanchez as quarterback, or any other minor move or major overhaul, the entire Jets organization needs to take a long hard collective look in the mirror and ask "what kind of team do we want to be?"

The Jets can't be the Florham Park Patriots, or the Green Giants, or any other knock-off version of a team that knocked everyone's socks off for one magical season or one dominant decade.  The Jets have spent too many years trying to be Parcells' old Giants or Belichick's Patriots, or the 1985 Bears, and it's simply not working.  Hell, the Jets can't even figure out a way to become the reincarnation of Weeb Ewbank's 1968 Jets, and for good reason... those teams already existed and are now part of past history! When Rex Ryan became head coach in 2009, one of his first goals was to make sure his players all knew how to play like Jets, but Rex never really explained what a Jet was supposed to play like, so this entire roster is perpetually trying to define itself and its style as a knock-off of other teams, leaving everyone in an identity crisis.

As I've written before, there's a lack of vision, or as we might say in the academic world, the Jets are in ontological and epistemological crisis. I'm still waiting for Rex Ryan to paint a verbal picture of what a truly great Jets performance looks like beyond the final score and how many busted up bodies are in the opposing training room.  How many times have we heard Rex say "we'll take it" even though his supposedly vaunted defense gave up 200 yards rushing or 400 yards passing, or the offense barely showed a pulse? Sure, you can win ugly; Herm Edwards loved winning games "Shreck style", but every head coach should have his "perfect" game within his thought process, no differently than master chefs envision the prefect menu item or conductors envision the perfect symphony.

I frankly don't care if the Jets ideally see themselves as having a suffocating defense, or a bombs-away passing attack, or a meat-grinder run-oriented offense. I don't care if the Jets want to win every game 45-42, 10-7 or 52-9, but if they know what an ideal Jets game looks like, then they need to build their team accordingly. Have a vision. Articulate the vision. Create an identity. Build a team that matches the identity and stick with that core essence for several years and see how it progresses. You can't be the '85 Bears reincarnated one year, Ground and Pound the next, then Air Coryell the third. Even the old Soviet Union had five-year plans! The general manager, head coach, coaching staff and entire team roster need to consistently match the team vision and identity.  It's like being a salesperson -- if you don't believe in the product or its value, you'll never sell it.

Should Mike Tannenbaum be fired as GM? Perhaps the time has come for a change, but it all depends on the organizational vision and identity.  Tannenbaum might very well be the right GM if he's in sync with the vision, but we don't know because Tannenbaum seems to be making too many personnel moves based on coupon clipping theory rather than what it takes to build a genuine NFL contender.

The same is true for Rex Ryan as head coach. If the Jets had a comprehensive vision besides "find a way to win more games than the Patriots or Giants do", perhaps Rex might be someone who can guide the team as long as Chuck Noll did with the Steelers, or Tom Landry did with the Cowboys, or Don Shula did with the Dolphins, but we don't know, because Rex's too obsessed trying to compete with his father's legacy as defensive coordinator of the 1985 Bears as well as the number of Super Bowl rings Bill Belichick owns. If the Jets can have real stability under Rex and make the leap to contender status, that would be very preferable, but there are times Rex seems befuddled at how to be the voice and face of an NFL franchise.  Just like Tannenbaum, if Rex can't develop or articulate a vision, much less put one into action, then he should be fired.

What about Mark Sanchez? What about him?! I haven't seen a Jets fan base so eager to chase a quarterback out of town since the days of Richard Todd, and don't think there aren't some very eerie parallels between these two franchise players within the annals of Jets history. Just a few hours ago, I heard one ESPN bloviator tell another "I really wanted to see the Jets give Sanchez one game, all to himself, without any Tebow substitutions or interruptions, so we could see what Sanchez can really do.  Now we see. He lost by 30 points. Get him out of there and put in Tebow."

REALLY? Sanchez deserved one such game, after ten weeks of having his entire 2012 season disrupted by Tim Tebow and his legion of fanatical supporters, and that's his final trial to prove his worth as an NFL quarterback?  How did we get from ten weeks of "oh, c'mon... just give Tebow a couple of series. Let him play! Let him show what he can do!" to a week 11 ultimatum for the Jets franchise quarterback?  How stupid have we all become?! For ten weeks, every misinformed fan and media member begged for Tebow to get his fair chance, and now the same people are willing to hand the keys to the entire offense over to a fullback masquerading as quarterback with no need for an audition anymore?! I hate to break the news to everyone yet again, but Tim Tebow is NOT a legitimate NFL quarterback with his current physical size, muscular bulk and grasp of an offensive playbook, and if the Jets are going to hand the full-time reigns over to anyone other than Sanchez, it should be Greg McElroy, who has the right physical stature and level of scheme comprehension.

Last night's interception? From my view of the play it looked like Jeremy Kerley cut his route too wide as Sanchez committed to throw the pass into soft safety coverage. The fumble? Busted plays happen no matter how many years experience a quarterback has, and Sanchez had the presence of mind to slide to the ground once he realized the play was going nowhere. Sliding into Brandon Moore's ass was more due to Moore being pushed backwards by Vince Wilfork than Sanchez looking for an inappropriate place to bury his head.

And while we're on the subject of fumbling, did anyone pay attention to how hard the Patriots defensive players were smacking Jets ball carriers? You get popped like Sanchez, Joe McKnight and Shonn Greene got popped last night, you'd lose your grip on the ball too, if only to reach and see if your teeth are still in your mouth.

But let's look at things more fundamentally... no one trusts Sanchez as quarterback... not the fans, coaches, owner, or members of the media. Don't tell me he's had almost four years to demonstrate how lousy he is... fans were calling for his benching by his fourth NFL game, a 24-10 loss at New Orleans, the first loss of the 2009 season after a 3-0 start, where he committed four turnovers. Oh, and it got worse as the bonus baby rookie, trying to play NFL quarterback in what really should've been his junior year at USC, committed six more turnovers two weeks later in a 16-13 overtime loss at home to the Bills, and three more a month later in a 24-22 loss at home to Jacksonville, and five more a week after that in a 31-14 loss at New England.

And let's not forget Hot dog-gate during the final minutes of a 38-0 week 7 win at Oakland. 

Everyone's fed up and making final calls for his head on Thanksgiving 2012?! You were all doing the same damn thing by Thanksgiving 2009! If Sanchez is a mess at quarterback, it's not anywhere near of his own doing.  For all the mistakes and dumb things a kid in his early 20s has done in four years calling signals behind center, eating junk food on the bench, giving lame press conferences, and dating too many celebrities, we, as Jets Nation, have inflicted far more damage than he has!

The Jets invested a top-five draft pick and a lot of money in him and he's yet to enjoy a genuinely full opportunity to mature and develop into the franchise NFL quarterback he was expected to become.  Think about it... by Thanksgiving 2009 this kid's head was already screwed up with fans screaming for his head and his coaches forcing him to wear color-coded wrist bands and deal with all sorts of stupid word-association games in order to avoid mistakes.  AVOID MISTAKES?! Rookies are supposed to make mistakes, even highly drafted and well-paid ones. 

He was a kid, for heavens sake! A mere puppy! He still is! My mustache is almost old enough to be his father... we don't fully grasp how young he really is, especially coming out of college two years too early. You can't tell a kid to play quarterback like it's defensive driving school. That screws his head up and makes him afraid. Fear of failure has a warped way of manifesting itself by causing a series of mistakes like uncontrollable hiccups or flatulence.  It's a wonder being the Jets starting quarterback hasn't given Sanchez a permanent case of irritable bowel syndrome.

Has Sanchez been coddled?  Maybe yes. maybe no. Some fans and media members think Sanchez hasn't been challenged for his job security. Maybe that's the case, but maybe not having a legitimate back-up who can take away his job has created terror instead of complacency.  If you know you're left holding the bag at quarterback and there's no one to bail you out, no Don Strock to your David Woodley moments, that's not overly comfortable either. You don't have a choice but to keep strapping on your helmet and taking your lumps for the team, over and over again.  You're damned if you do, and damned if you don't.  If you can't comprehend how Sanchez may feel between a rock and a hard place as quarterback of an offense that resembles a stripped-down Buick, think about how screwed the average adult is dealing with a mother-in-law.

How is a mother-in-law a metaphor for Sanchez's dilemma? When I was married I couldn't stand my mother-in-law (I still can't, by the way, and I haven't seen the woman in almost four years), and my wife would threaten me before every family gathering if I dared say anything nasty to her mother, no matter how many insulting things the woman publicly said about me or my own family. Well, if you were raised like I was, your mother taught you that if you don't have anything nice to say about someone, keep your mouth shut.  Well, without fail, every time my wife and I would return home from a family gathering, she'd scream at me "why won't you talk with my mother?!" Here I am, trying to be the polite person my mother raised me to be and avoid letting my mouth get me into trouble among a bunch of Nussbaums, and my wife is pissed because I opted not to engage with a woman I absolutely despised. THAT'S what damned if you do, damned if you don't looks like! THAT'S what Mark Sanchez has to deal with as the starting quarterback of the New York Jets!

No one besides Rex Ryan and his big mouth had any illusions that the 2009 Jets were anything close to a Super Bowl contender. Most folks, and we can all go back and look it up, were fully prepared for and expected an 8-8 season as the Jets rebuilt their offense with Sanchez after Brett Favre and 2008 blew up on everyone. 9-7 was a very pleasant surprise and making it to the AFC Championship Game in Indianapolis was icing on the cake with such a young and inexperienced quarterback.

Here we are, three years later, and everyone's still freaking out that Sanchez makes mistakes, often the same ones over and over again.  Well... so does Eli Manning every now and then, even with two Super Bowl titles and MVP awards, and so does Tony Romo in Dallas, and Phillip Rivers in San Diego, and Jay Cutler in Chicago, and Ryan Fitzpatrick in Buffalo. When is it going to be Tebow Time in those cities? The great Peyton Manning still throws interceptions, be it in Indianapolis or Denver. He even throws a pick-six every now and then. Drew Brees of the Saints throws his fair share of interceptions too. Matthew Stafford in Detroit completed only 31 of 61 passes yesterday in an overtime loss to Houston. That's a 50.8 completion percentage. Where are the Lions fans calling for Tebow to replace him? Atlanta's Matt Ryan threw five interceptions last week against Arizona. Why aren't Falcons fans calling for his benching and begging for a trade for Tebow? Quarterbacks make mistakes, even the great or elite ones, all without the existence of one Timothy Richard Tebow waiting in the wings like some vulture.

Joe Namath, the greatest quarterback in Jets history, had a lifetime completion percentage of barely 50 percent during his thirteen-year AFL-NFL career. He threw more interceptions than touchdowns.  In fact, during the Jets 1968 Super Bowl season, Namath completed 49.2 percent of his passes, throwing 17 interceptions against 15 touchdowns.  On four occasions, Namath threw two or more interceptions. Twice he threw five interceptions, in losses to 1-12-1 Buffalo and 5-9 Denver.  Did the Jets bench Namath? No, despite defensive coordinator Walt Michaels wanting to kill him a few times.  And the Jets won the Super Bowl that season.

How did Namath's rookie season, 1965, go? The Jets went 5-8-1 and Namath completed 48.2 percent of his passes (18 TD, 15 INT) on the way to being AFL Rookie of the Year.  1966? 6-6-2, 49.3 completion percentage, 19 TD, 27 INT. 1967? 8-5-1, 52.5 completion percentage, 26 TD, 28 INT.

What do we see, boys and girls? The Jets let Namath play quarterback, grow into the position, make his mistakes and not play in fear.  Did Joe Willie give his coaches plenty of agita in the process? Yes, he did, but he also became the first quarterback to pass for 4,000 yards in a single season (14 games back then) and the Jets won a Super Bowl.  In four years, Namath threw 1,692 passes, barely completed half of them, and tossed 87 interceptions along the way to a Super Bowl title. The Jets won 30 regular season games during his first four seasons. Do the math... one glorious championship season included, the Jets were approximately 8-6 on average during those first four seasons. What a coincidence! 8-6 for a 14-game regular season is very similar to 9-7 for a 16-game season. The Jets weren't some overlooked AFL dynasty during Joe Willie's early years. They needed to take a leap up from pretender to contender, which they basically did for one special season.

Sanchez has thrown 1,754 passes, completing more than half of them, with 61 interceptions.  The Jets have won 32 regular season games during Sanchez's tenure, which averages out to 8-8 and pretender yet to be contender status.  If you toss in fumbles and any other blunders, the only major difference between the Jets during Namath's first four years and the Jets during Sanchez's is Super Bowl III. The 1960s were a different time. Perhaps Sanchez needs 5-6 years to grow into where Broadway Joe was by Super Bowl III? But we don't give Sanchez enough time to test that theory, because we have no patience with learning curves to begin with.

Ever since Joe Willie left the Jets in 1977, no matter who's the head coach or quarterback, the mantra has been don't screw anything up... just go out and win like Joe did. What has been the result? A bunch of 8-8 and 9-7 seasons sprinkled with some 4-12, 6-10, 11-5 and a heap of headcase quarterbacks who couldn't live up to impossible expectations... and we're doing it to Mark Sanchez too! When do we stop the madness and break this ridiculous cycle, especially since Joe Namath was hardly the standard for quarterbacking efficiency to begin with?!  Even if Sanchez gets benched for Tebow, how long will it be before Jets Nation turns Tebow into a headcase? Gunslingers, perpetual scramblers and game managers can all end up seriously neurotic trying to please our fan base.

I can imagine it now... Rex Ryan and the Jets brain trust finally relent and give the fans what they've called for, Tebow starting at quarterback, perhaps the regular season home finale, a Sunday night affair December 23rd against San Diego.  Tebow runs around aimlessly for 58 minutes, completing a mere two passes all night to Jets players and six to Chargers defensive players.  Somehow the Jets trail by eight at the two-minute warning, Tebow pulls a rabbit out of his helmet with a last-play touchdown scramble, then gets sacked on the two-point conversion attempt and the Jets lose. How do his fans and supporters react? Oh, he almost did it! He kept us in position to win the whole night and almost won it on the power of his legs and the spirit of Christ in his soul.

Excuse me while I take a moment to hypothetically vomit my guts out... You and I all know that if Tebow's interceptions outnumber completions by a 3:1 ratio, we're all going to beg for an atheist who can throw to the correct colored jerseys ASAP! Two completions and six picks will not -- and should not -- earn Tebow, or any supposed savior, the benefit of the doubt or another start as the Jets quarterback, be it running a pro-style or wildcat offense.

One last dagger at Tebowmania... he reportedly had two broken ribs suffered against Seattle and couldn't even throw a pass last night, but he was the active back-up quarterback and in uniform on the sidelines while a perfectly healthy McElroy wasn't.  After the game, Tebow, according to ESPN's Sal Paolantonio, was tossing passes right-handed to a young boy from Jacksonville attending the game as part of the Make-a-Wish Foundation. In the locker room, Tebow told reporters that he wanted to be available "in case there was an emergency and he was needed." Oh really?! What would've constituted an "emergency" -- Sanchez suffering an injury slamming his head into Brandon Moore's tuchus? Sanchez tossing three or four interceptions? The Jets being down by thirty points at halftime? Woody Johnson receiving an urgent telegram from the Easter Bunny?!

Or is Tebow such a narcissist that he "talked" his way into being dressed and active for the sake of appearance and enhancing his "brand" on NBC's prime-time coverage and with little sick kids from Florida? I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'll take a bumbling Sanchez who gives it his all, mistakes and all, for 60 minutes over Tebow wasting 58 minutes and waiting for the two-minute warning so he can save the day like Mighty Mouse (see Andy Kaufman's 1975 debut on "Saturday Night Live") and have his "SportsCenter moment."

I've questioned his motives for refusing to see himself as anything other than a starting quarterback in the NFL, for "agreeing" to a trade to New York so he could back-up "a great friend" in Sanchez while sharks circled Sanchez after last season's collapse, and for maintaining publicly how he's "always competing" every day with the Jets. Now I must raise the toughest question of all: did Tebow misrepresent a rib injury and put his own interests, persona and agenda ahead of a properly-set team roster last night by taking a spot better suited with McElroy active?  If that's the case, and if I was calling the shots with the Jets, Tebow would be immediately released and his contract voided for violation of team and league policy, and Tannenbaum, Ryan and the entire Jets coaching staff would be terminated effective six hours after the final gun of the 2012 season sounded. Period. Exclamation point. End of discussion. Let Tebow hire the NFLPA to fight for his severance, and let Tannenbaum, Ryan and the rest of the coaches consult attorneys if they think they're wrongfully terminated.

If "Play like a Jet" means the logo on the helmet takes precedent over the names on the back of jerseys or lockers, then manipulating a roster to put the team at disadvantage for the sake of an injured player's public image is an absolutely inexcusable and intolerable offense.

This finally leads me to the most important and potentially volatile issue facing the Jets as 2012 sets the stage for 2013.  If you look at the roster, the Jets have a few over-paid and under-performing players beyond what anyone thinks of Sanchez. Such players eat up valuable salary-cap space and force Tannenbaum and Ryan to fill slots with Wal-Mart quality talent, and it's undermining the team's overall depth, strength, stamina and performance.  Whether fans and media members want to accept it or not, Darrelle Revis and Santonio Holmes become salary-cap liabilities coming back from season-ending injuries, especially if Revis plans to stage yet another hold-out to hold Woody Johnson's money hostage.  As I've written before with his 2010 hold-out, the quest to be the highest-paid defensive player, even by a mere penny, means Revis cares more about his own financial portfolio and ego than ever bringing a Lombardi trophy to MetLife Stadium draped in Jet green and white. All those millions Revis and his agents strong-arm for him are millions the Jets can't use to sign other great talents, on offense and defense, to free agent contracts or contract extensions, and that's how a team in the salary-cap era fails to maintain roster stability and build a contender. $16M to Revis, and $10M to Holmes leaves any GM only $100M to put together the best possible 53-man roster.  Take away $8M for Sanchez, a few more millions for center Nick Mangold, Tackle D'Brickashaw Ferguson, tight end Dustin Keller, linebacker David Harris, cornerback Antonio Cromartie, safeties Le Ron Landry and Yeremiah Bell and perhaps a few other starters, and before you know it, the poor GM is trying to find starting right tackles and third-down pass rushing specialists for the league minimum.  Add that all up and that's how a salary cap of $125M or so gets you 8-8 or 9-7 year after year, if you're lucky.

The Jets have already let some talented players leave, post-injury or not, simply because the players over-inflated their price tags... Leon Washington, Alan Faneca, Pete Kendall, Brad Smith, Thomas Jones, Braylon Edwards, Jay Feely... we often overlook how valuable role players are on an NFL roster, and so do some of those role players in their personal quest for top dollar.  Many decades ago, Branch Ricky, then the GM of the Pittsburgh Pirates, offered a pay cut to perennial National League home run champ and future hall of famer Ralph Kiner on the basis of "we're a last-place team with or without you, big paycheck or small."  As great a talent as Revis is, the Jets brain trust needs to ask itself if Revis at $16M is really worth it if the team is basically mediocre with or without him.  Since being drafted in 2007, the Jets are 4-12, 9-7, 9-7, 11-5, and 8-8 with him (give or take a missed game or two for a tweaked hamstring), and 3-6 without him since his week 3 knee injury. 41-39 with a healthy Revis the first five seasons. $16M for a cornerback, granted one of the best, and barely better than .500? Is he really worth it, considering how well the Jets defensive secondary has played without him so far this year? I'm not saying force Revis to accept a pay cut all the way down to $1M or $2M next year, or even release him, but sit down and have an honest discussion with him about reality, team economics and the team's overall performance since he's been drafted.  Coming off reconstructive knee surgery, Revis can't hold the team financial hostage. Just like Tebow and being suited up last night when reportedly unable to play, no single player can put himself above the team if winning a Super Bowl is the primary goal.  53 men have to learn how to work together physically, intellectually, economically and socially, or else they can forget ever winning one Super Bowl title, much less several en route to becoming a dynasty. Revis, Holmes, Tebow and everyone else with an image-related agenda needs to face the music and accept that this is the New York Jets, in quest of returning to the Super Bowl and winning for the first time since January 1969, not the New York Revises, Holmeses or Tebows. Do these guys really want to be remembered as champions, with shiny rings and legacies to last a lifetime, or do they want to suck as many dollars away from the rest of their teammates for their own personal wealth? It's a pretty basic question with a fairly simple answer, even in this era of multi-million-dollar salaries.

At the end of last season's collapse, Rex Ryan said the Jets all needed to do some soul searching in order to recommit to winning in 2012.  Even if all things break just right the next five weeks, the Jets will still only be a 9-7 team, hardly the kind of record Super Bowl champions regularly have, so it's clear there's still a lot more soul searching to do.  But this time the soul searching needs to be deep beneath the surface and utilize every physical sense, not just speech.

We always talk about the heart of champions and the souls of teams.  Based on what we're all seeing so far in 2012, all of Jets Nation -- ownership, front office, coaches, players, fans and media pundits -- need to relocate the true heart and soul necessary for the Jets to ever have all the right parts and wherewithal to be the champions everyone keeps yammering about.  If becoming a champion is the goal, you need to play like a 12-4 team, not just talk like one. Talking like a 12-4 team when you're scuffling to finish 9-7 doesn't make you a 12-4 team, no matter how much you believe a championship is possible. Eventually every team has to shut up and simply play football, assuming the team -- and its supporters -- knows what playing winning football looks like.

One real Turkey of Pigskin Analysis - Doc's bark for November 20, 2012

Thanksgiving approaches while football and culinary gluttons prepare to enter the land of Gobble-gobbelopolis, and I'm just as unable to get my head around this football season going into the end of November as I was back in the beginning of September. Wonders never cease to amaze me as the Twitterverse is all atwitter with football fans prognosticating college rankings, bowl matchups, and wild card chances for their favorite Division I-A (er... FBS... or is it BCS?) or NFL teams.  I typically advise football fans not to worry about postseason scenarios until at least midseason, but even at this point of autumn I have no clue how things may shake out.  Is this all due to parity, convoluted overtime rules, over-emphasis on player safety, under-emphasis on player fundamentals, the cosmic randomness of our galaxy, or some other silly notion on par with Sabermetrics in baseball?

Beats me, but each passing weekend convinces me more and more that football seasons are getting stranger and stranger.

Take Saturday's NCAA football action as evidence Earth's axis might be tilted a bit more than usual.  In Exhibit A, I present to you this final score from West Point: Temple 63, Army 32.  Uh huh! Uh huh! Everyone not consuming hallucinogens knows Temple football teams don't score 63 points in a single game. Heck! Sometimes Temple football teams don't score 63 points in a month! But there it was, thanks to 351 yards and seven rushing touchdowns by Montel Harris, the Temple Owls football team imitated the Temple basketball team. 

In fact, the Temple-Army game was one of twelve games played on Saturday that seemed more like lopsided basketball games. Twelve different teams scored at least 50 points, and among them three topped 60 (Temple, Clemson in beating North Carolina State 62-48, Oregon State in beating Cal 62-14) and one topped 70 (Morehead State beat Valparaiso 76-24). Topping 70 actually isn't so unique anymore, since Oregon manages that feat a couple of times each season, but Oregon didn't even top 20 this weekend, falling in overtime to Stanford 17-14, an absolute scoring drought compared to all the points-o-plenty from this weekend's action.

The Clemson-NC State game led the pack on games completely devoid of defense.  Of the twelve teams topping the 50-point plateau Saturday, four actually surrendered more than thirty points, most notably Oklahoma which sqeaked by West Virginia 50-49. 50-49 is not what people expect for Sooners-Mountaineers.  50-49 is what we expect when Penn and Princeton get together at the Palestra for an Ivy League hoops battle.

By comparison, Exhibit B provides us nine NCAA Men's basketball games from Saturday where at least one team failed to score 50 points.  All nine teams lost their games, the worst performance being Mercer, scoring a mere 36 losing by 26 to the University of Illinois-Chicago.

When did college football games start having basketball scores? I can't wait to see some of these defensive stalwarts (ha) in a bowl game in six weeks.  Can you imagine two of these programs getting together and fans throwing toilet paper streamers from the stands after the first touchdown is scored, like they do at basketball games? People complain that the NFL has become too much of a passing league due to rules progressively favoring quarterbacks and receivers, but I beg to differ... the NFL has become a passing league because too many defensive players never learned how to master tackling in college.  Watch any Big-12 football game! You'll see what I mean.  Heck! Watch the replay of Saturday's Temple-Army game.  If the Pentagon trained soldiers the way Army defenders slowed down Montel Harris, we would've surrendered to Iraq years ago.

Let's take a look at Exhibit C, the NFL regular season as week 11 nears its conclusion.  Wasn't it only a few weeks ago when fans and pundits were lamenting how seemingly superior the NFC was to the AFC based on teams with winning records? Yeah, what about it? Has anyone taken a look at the standings today?

There are exactly two 9-1 teams - Houston in the AFC South and Atlanta in the NFC South. There is one 8-2 team, Baltimore leading the AFC North. San Francisco is 7-2-1, comfortably leading the NFC West. New England, Denver, Green Bay and Chicago are all 7-3. 

What's my point? There are 17 -- yes, seventeen -- teams (8 in the AFC, 9 in the NFC) that are within one game above or below .500 -- 17 teams that are either 6-4, 5-5 or 4-6 -- middle of the pack teams somehow in the mix for a postseason berth -- the Jets, Dolphins, Bills, Colts, Titans, Bengals, Steelers, Chargers, Giants, Cowboys, Redskins, Buccaneers, Saints, Vikings, Lions, Seahawks and Cardinals are all jumbled within two games of each other and still have a legitimate chance of at least a wild card spot. That's more than half the league right in the bulge of the NFL's bell curve known as parity.  Any of these teams can get hot, win enough games down the stretch at the right time, and you never know what could happen.  It was only a mere ten months ago that the 9-7 Giants snatched the NFC East crown on the final night of the regular season and parlayed it to a Super Bowl title, their second in five years.  Which one among these 17 teams might be this year's Super Bowl champ? The first Sunday in February is still around eleven weeks away. Anything can happen for the good.

And anyting can happen for the bad. Remember last year? The Bears were 7-3 and looked like the NFC front runner alongside the 10-0 Packers. What happened? The Packers went 15-1 but weren't as strong as weeks earlier and got bounced out of the playoffs, and the Bears lost their starting quarterback and ended up 8-8 and out of the postseason. Injuries are a killer. Case in point, Exhibit D -- the 1993 Dolphins. After winning a crazy Thanksgiving Day game in snowy Dallas (the "Leon Lett touched the blocked field goal" game), Miami was 9-2 and on a roll, even without Dan Marino (lost weeks earlier to an Achilles injury). Five straight losses later, they were 9-7 and out of the playoffs.

The Texans are 9-1 now, but a year ago they were 10-3 and barely hung on to win the AFC South after injuries forced them down to their third-string quarterback, rookie Tyler Yates. Six weeks to go is a long, long time and all sorts of good and bad things can happen to a team looking forward towards the postseason. Yesterday's 43-37 overtime win against 1-9 Jacksonville may be reason for concern. The first concern is Houston needed overtime on top of a late fourth-quarter comeback to beat a 1-9 team at home. The second concern is that the Texans needed a 527-yard passing (completing 43 of 55), five-touchdown performance by quarterback Matt Schaub in order to drive this comeback win. The third concern is that one of the league's top defenses gave up 458 yards and 37 points to one of the league's most anemic offenses.

Wasn't it only two weeks ago the Falcons were 8-0 and seemingly invincible, or at least kinda awesome? They don't seem so invincible or awesome after struggling to beat Arizona at home Sunday, 23-19. Matt Ryan threw five interceptions, and the Falcons added a fumble for good measure, yet managed to win in spite of themselves and a -5 turnover margin.  Ryan's extreme generosity -- the first QB to toss 5 INT, zero TD and win since Bart Starr did it with the 1967 Packers -- got me thinking about NFL quarterbacks, especially given how many teams have questions if not extensive fan-based hysterics on hand directed towards their quarterbacks and passing games.

It's not every day that a quarterback throws 5 INT in an NFL game, and as we now know, winning a game you throw 5 INT is even rarer.  Since 1960, the NFL and old AFL have played a combined 11,327 regular season games, and in 148 of those games (approximately 1.3 percent), a quarterback has thrown 5 INT. Matt Ryan became just the 13th NFL quarterback since 1960 to throw 5 INT in a game and win.

It's even less frequent for a quarterback to pass for 500 or more yards in an NFL game.  In case you were wondering, the very first time an NFL quarterback accomplished the feat was September 28, 1951 when Norm Van Brocklin passed for 554 yards and five touchdowns, leading the then-Los Angeles Rams to a 54-14 win against the old New York Yankees (yes... there used to be an NFL team called the Yankees). Van Brocklin's feat (a mere five days before Bobby Thompson's "Shot heard 'round the World"... yes... there also used to be a MLB team called the New York Giants... PLEASE read a sports history book, those of you born in the 21st century! Sheesh!), believe it or not, is still the single-game NFL record for passing yards, 61 years and counting.

More importantly, since Van Brocklin's still-standing record day in 1951, thirteen other quarterbacks have eclipsed the 500-yard plateau (no one ever accomplished the feat more than once), Schaub's 527 yards being the second-most (tying Warren Moon's 527 yards, reached on December 16, 1990, when the the former Houston Oilers beat the Kansas City Chiefs  27-10).  When you think about it, you might think passing for 500 yards is not only pretty special, but also helps a team win and win big, and normally the lots-of-yards equals lots-of-points makes sense, but not in the NFL, my friends.  Believe it or not, of the fourteen quarterbacks to pass for 500 yards in a game, six were actually the losing quarterback on that day. 

Another quirky thing about passing for 500 yards is that all those yards don't necessarily translate to lots of points. In fact, nine of those fourteen quarterbacks' offensive units failed to score at least 40 points, and one quarterback, Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints, generated a mere sixteen points in losing a game that he passed for 510 yards. Yessir... On November 19, 2006 (six years ago yesterday) Brees (he of lots of passing records and an offensive unit that scores bunches of points) passed for 510 yards and the Saints lost to the Cincinnati Bengals 31-16.  On that day, Brees passed for two touchdowns and the Saints did little else besides move up and down the field without scoring points.  Sometimes a lot of passing yards doesn't translate into touchdown passes, so it helps if other players are scoring points. Case in point is Phil Simms' 513-yard performance against the Bengals on October 13, 1985. Simms passed for only one touchdown, the fewest in a 500-yard game, and the Giants lost 35-30.

Does a quarterback need to throw a lot of passes, or complete a lot of passes, in order to accumulate 500 yards in a single game? Well, thirteen threw at least 40 pass attempts (the lone exception was Y.A. Tittle, who threw 39 passes on October 28, 1962, beating the Redskins 49-34), two threw at least 60 passes (Simms completed 40 of 62; Dan Marino completed 35 of 60 in 1988), two completed at least 40 passes (Simms' 40 in 1985 and Schaub's 43 on Sunday) but four quarterbacks completed fewer than 30 passes (Tittle, Moon and Van Brocklin all completed 27; Ben Roethlisberger completed 29 in a 37-36 win over Green Bay on December 20, 2009).

The most-efficient passing performance among the fourteen 500-yard games was Tittle's 1962 gem, completing 27 of 39 passes (69.2 percent) for 505 yards and 7 touchdowns. The least-efficient, if we can even say that, was Dan Marino's game on October 23, 1988, completing 35 of 60 passes (58.3 percent) for 521 yards and 3 touchdowns. Unfortunately, Marino also threw 5 INT and the Dolphins lost to the New York Jets 44-30 (see... I told you throwing 5 INT is typically a losing proposition.

What about throwing for 500 yards and touchdown passes? Tittle threw seven. Van Brocklin, Schaub and Matthew Stafford (Lions, January 1, 2012) each threw five. Tom Brady (Patriots, September 12, 2011) threw four. Moon, Esiason, Marino, Eli Manning (Giants, September 16, 2012), Vince Ferragamo (Rams, December 26, 1982) and Roethlisberger each threw three. Brees and Elvis Grbac (Chiefs, November 5, 2000) each threw two. Simms threw one.

Perhaps the oddest factoid about the fourteen 500-yard games in NFL history is that only two involved overtime, Schaub's game on Sunday and Boomer Esiason's 522-yard performance on November 10, 1996. Esiason completed 35 of 59 passes and threw 3 touchdowns in a 37-34 Arizona win over the Redskins.

Last, for those fans of obscure and potentially useless trivia, November is the most-frequent month for 500-yard passing performances with four, September, October and December each have three, and January had one such performance.

After ten games played by all 32 teams so far this regular season, 34 quarterbacks have thrown at least 100 passes and are listed among the league rankings.  Supposedly, the "standard" for "good" quarterback play, in this era, includes a pass completion percentage above sixty and a quarterback efficiency rating above eighty. Guess how many of 34 quarterbacks are currently completing less than sixty percent of their passes? Thirteen, and with the exception of Michael Vick, everyone else has 1-4 years of NFL experience. Guess how many of 34 quarterbacks currently have an efficiency rating below eighty? Nine, and with the exception of Michael Vick, everyone else has 1-4 years of NFL experience.

What do these two statistical trends possibly mean? Relatively young and inexperienced quarterbacks tend to struggle with consistency and efficiency... and Michael Vick really hasn't improved with age. These two trends may also suggest that consistency and efficiency improve with age, experience and maturity, and that it likely takes more than 3-4 years to grow into being an NFL quarterback, just like it takes at least that long to grow into a lot of professions or occupations, like medicine and teaching, so if you're a fan of a young and struggling quarterback, perhaps it might make good sense to back off, be more patient and let your team's quarterback mature and evolve into his potential (see New York Jets fans and Mark Sanchez critics).

Do quarterback sacks worry you? It's hard for a quarterback to throw passes lying on his back, right? Well, let's suppose being sacked at least 15 times in the first ten games is an arbitrary caution threshold for a team's passing game.  Guess how many of 34 quarterbacks have been sacked less than 15 times heading into Thanksgiving? Seven -- Peyton (Broncos) and Eli (Giants) Manning , Josh Freeman (Bucs), Brandon Weeden (Browns), the Texans' Schaub, Arizona's John Skelton and Tennessee's Matt Hasselbach -- and Skelton and Hasselbach haven't even been their team's full-time starter all season.

On the other hand, guess how many of the 34 quarterbacks have been sacked at least 25 times heading into Thansgiving? Six -- Michael Vick (Eagles), Sam Bradford (Rams), Aaron Rodgers (Packers), Christian Ponder (Vikings), Jay Cutler (Bears) and Kevin Kolb (Cardinals) -- and Kolb shares the quarterback duties with Skelton!

What does this all possibly mean? Well, in addition to Michael Vick seeming to be on the wrong end of a lot of statistical trends for quarterbacks, anybody playing quarterback for the Arizona Cardinals is a glorified tackling dummy for opposing pass rushers. We might also wish to note that the number of times your quarterback is running for his life or being knocked to the ground may not necessarily dictate success or lackthereof, since the most-sacked list includes Rodgers of the 7-3 Packers and Cutler of the 7-3 Bears, and the least-sacked list includes Weeden of the 2-8 Browns.

Perhaps touchdown-to-interception ratio matters to you. After all, tossing five picks like Matt Ryan did Sunday usually doesn't bode well for success, although that brings his season total to seven versus 20 touchdowns. But there are six quarterbacks from the list of 34 who've thrown more interceptions than touchdowns (Dallas' Tony Romo, Carolina's Cam Newton, Miami's Ryan Tannehill, Cleveland's Weeden, Matt Cassel of the Chiefs and Arizona's Skelton), and only three play for teams still with a middle-of-the-pack chance at the playoffs (Romo, Tannehill and Skelton).

Just like completion percentage, yardage and sacks, any individual statistical trend may not tell us anything worth a bag of beans about quarterbacks and team success, but putting all of these statistical trends together may give you a reasonable profile on what makes for a winning and successful quarterback. For my money, I think it's fairly safe to say that unless you're an incredibly gifted athlete surrounded by several other incredibly gifted athletes, you probably can't be a winning NFL quarterback if you're constantly under pressure, running for your life, unable to consistently complete passes (especially scoring passes) to your best receivers, completing too many passes to guys in the wrong-colored jerseys, and are still in the early half of your learning and development curve. In other words, youth, lack of supporting cast and mistakes are not a quarterback's best friend in the cold cruel NFL.

What's our take-home lesson heading into the final six weeks of the regular season? Stop complaining about your team's starting quarterback, let him play, and see where it leads.  In the meantime, let indigestion be limited to turkey consumption, not your quarterback's passing statistics.