Mike Salfino reminds everyone how good Mark Sanchez looked in the playoffs. I think a lot of it has to do with how the running game does, which itself has a lot to do with how Matt Slauson fits into the offensive line. I know it has little to do with how the passing game looked in the preseason, because the NFL preseason is bupkus. Just a friendly reminder.
Take Jacobs, for example. He’s apparently annoyed about being demoted to the No. 2 running back role behind Ahmad Bradshaw. OK, fine. You and I would be annoyed too. Human nature, etc.
But Jacobs deserves to be demoted, based on the way he played last year. Bradshaw’s injuries severely limited his playing time, Derrick Ward was gone, the rookie they drafted got hurt and missed the whole year. Last year was Jacobs’ year to dominate — to stamp himself as one of the best and most reliable backs in the league. And he didn’t do it.
Jacobs ran carefully when he should have been aggressive. He whined about the way he’s used and perceived. He stunk, along with so many other parts of the team, and as a result he has lost his starting job.
For many, this would be a wake-up call. A sign that something has to change. That the way you went about your business last year wasn’t good enough and you need to look in the mirror and do something about it. But not for Jacobs.
I was going to write about this today, but Graz took care of it. I don’t like to put too much stock in players blowing up at reporters, but answering questions is part of the job, and — like Dan says — while it’s human nature to be upset about losing his starting spot, Jacobs has a lot of nerve to be complaining. For all the reasons Dan mentions, but also this:
You’re playing behind a guy who has had injury problems his whole career on a team known for sharing carries. You’re going to get plenty of chances. If you know you’re better than a backup — and it sounds like you feel that way — make something of them.
Ryan and his staff have altered the way people look at the Jets and given the team an unexpected marketing boost as they move into the New Meadowlands Stadium, where the Jets will have a new identity even though they will still share quarters with the Giants. For the Jets, the promotional dividends produced by “Hard Knocks” have not been countered by a disastrous injury. The worst that happened was Ryan’s mother (and Tony Dungy) expressing consternation about the coach’s profanity.
And like a good cliffhanger, the hero of the tale, Revis, returned just in time to end the series.
– Richard Sandomir, N.Y. Times.
I’ve neglected the Jets for the last couple weeks here because, honestly, I find preseason football awful and the hype around it difficult to bear. It’s meaningless. Teams show very little in the preseason and the starters hardly play.
But I probably should have mentioned the Revis thing, which is legitimately huge. For no particular reason, I felt confident from the start that the Jets and Revis would get something hammered out, then grew nervous thanks to Hard Knocks and the media blackout.
Anyway, now football season is starting. It’s starting! Football season! Hooray!
Before that happens, two final thoughts about Hard Knocks upon its finale last night:
• Everything they aired only served to confirm/strengthen my feelings about Mark Sanchez. Clearly he’s hilarious and awesome and willing to wear Taco Bell hats. What a hero. It only helps that I think he might actually turn into a decent quarterback.
I also like the idea of having him call the offense for the last preseason game. Then I thought it was particularly interesting or funny, or something, that he called that little slip-out pass on the goal line for the touchdown. That’s a Madden play. It’s a good call, no doubt, and it worked, but that’s one of those unstoppable Madden plays.
And it struck me that Sanchez’s generation — hell, my generation — is now growing up and coming of age and impacting professional football, and we all came up playing that game.
Madden’s not exactly like real football, obviously, but it’s not a terrible simulation either — and it gets more accurate all the time. And it encourages players to watch and interact with the game in a way they never would have if they were just playing it then tracking themselves on film in some dark room the following Monday with the coach yelling at them.
And so I wonder how the game will continue to change as a generation of players who grew up not just playing the game, but coaching and play-calling and strategizing in a decently accurate simulation year-round, comes of age.
• I could do without ever seeing Mike Tannenbaum on camera again. I know Hard Knocks is reality TV and the idea is that they’re all supposed to be behaving the way they would if the cameras weren’t there, but there’s no way you could convince me that everyone involved wasn’t conscious of the cameras throughout.
Rex Ryan and Mike Westhoff were really good at playing themselves, it seemed, but Tannenbaum’s performance seemed the most forced, like he was overacting the role of exasperated football GM.
Plus it just didn’t sit right with me that they filmed guys getting cut. That’s a major life event. If I’m a 23-year-old kid trying to make it in the NFL, there’s absolutely no way I want that documented and broadcast to a million homes or whatever.
Several Miami Dolphins crawled across the field after practice Tuesday — not due to exhaustion, but because they were looking for a diamond earring.
Defensive end Kendall Langford said he forgot to take his earrings off before practice and lost one during drills. He said the diamond was nearly 2.5 carats, which is why he was still on the field an hour after practice scanning the grass.
Wait, really? Because my understanding is that if the Dolphins are looking for someone to find lost gemstones around their facilities, they’ve already got a guy:
R.I.P. Roger Podacter.
Starring Bill Flett as the caddy from Happy Gilmore.
The DBs began tonight’s practice at Hofstra by eating a few cheeseburgers on the sideline. Strange, but true. The funny part was that they had sent rookie DB Bo Smith to get the aforementioned cheeseburgers from a nearby fast food joint, unaware that practice had been moved up from 6:00 p.m. to 5:15 p.m. Oops. He barely made it back.
Apparently Mark Sanchez got wind of the cheeseburgers and requested one. Outside linebackers coach Jeff Weeks snagged one and put it in his pocket. Last I checked, it was 30 minutes after the end of practice, Sanchez was still signing autographs and Weeks was loitering around nearby, the cheeseburger tucked safely in his pocket. As Weeks said with a wink, “You gotta take care of the franchise quarterback.”
– Lisa Zimmerman, TheJetsBlog.com.
OK, so first of all, since the Jets were at Hofstra yesterday I’m left to speculate where those cheeseburgers came from. There’s a McDonald’s right there — the one that used to be a Roy Rogers — but I feel like Lisa would have mentioned if they were McDonald’s cheeseburgers. Maybe Checkers? Checkers would be a decent choice.
If they were smart, of course, they’d have eschewed cheeseburgers and picked from one of the myriad fast-food fried-chicken places along Hempstead Turnpike. It’s a mecca. At last count there were something like seven of them within a half mile. Sadly, last I heard the Bojangles became a KFC, but Wings N’ Things still stands proudly at the start of what my friends always called The Chicken Strip.
Anyway, one of the most endearing things about Sanchez is obviously his appreciation for lowbrow cuisine. The way he playfully, harmlessly messed with the guy answering the phone at Domino’s in the first episode of Hard Knocks was priceless, plus he wears a Taco Bell hat, eats hot dogs on the sideline during games, and requests cheeseburgers of his defensive backs. What a stud.
Perhaps he was just ordering out for some General Tso’s chicken:
Thought the blog was lacking both color and football today and found this while ambling around the AP wire. I swooped up Keller toward the end of the draft, when I needed a tight end and wanted a couple of Jets to root for. I tried to get Mark Sanchez for my very last bench spot just because, but someone took him right before me.
This NY Post feature on Sanchez notes that the Jets’ QB and TedQuarters hero’s favorite burger comes from Le Parker Meridien, familiar to TedQuarters readers as the reigning Sandwich of the Week.
The nice ladies at Taco Bell gave me a Taco Bell hat, so I was really excited about that, and Bart [Scott] was really excited about that. This place is awesome.
– Mark Sanchez.
Amazing. <3 Mark Sanchez. Here’s a very dark screengrab of what Sanchez looked like in the Taco Bell hat, ripped off from Kissing Suzy Kolber, via Evan:
I missed Hard Knocks last night — I was TiVoing it in favor of the Mets game — but I’m told that Mark Sanchez was wearing a Taco Bell hat during one scene in a team meeting.
This, the intersection of Taco Bell and Mark Sanchez, is obviously the greatest moment in TedQuarters history. If someone can send me a screengrab or something, that would be tremendous. Until then, I’m just going to assume it looked like this:
Based on a Google Image search, that is by far the most common type of Taco Bell hat so I’m just going to go ahead and figure it’s the one Mark Sanchez was wearing. Also, if anyone has this or any other type of Taco Bell hat, please email me and we can negotiate a price.
And furthermore, one of the other Google Image returns for “Taco Bell Hat” is this photo, one of the more conflicting and terrifying images I’ve ever seen.
Tedquarters 