It was Mangini's choice to change the schemes and players. That is no excuse at all. We had a SB caliber team in 04 (or close anyway). Any changes he chose to make he has to live with. If we go down hill this year it is all on him.
We are only arguing about whether or not 10 wins was impressive last year. I personally believe it was a mistake to go to the 3-4 with the players we have. Mangini did it because he likes it. That's fine but you need the players for it to be effective and we wern't in running it.
The original argument was about Chad being worthy for his contract and I noted how he led us to 10 wins last year and that's where you chimed in about our sched. We were coming off 4 wins(mostly injury related but 4 wins), we lost our PB pass rusher, our HOF C, our LT, a PB DB and our crowning jewel of FA was Kimo Von Oelhoffen. We were getting older and changes needed to be made.
We played well late in the year in the 3-4 but I agree b/c 3 of our best defensive players were 4-3 players(Robertson, Vilma and Ellis).
Ellis is perfectly suited to the 3/4 as is Thomas who went from being a mediocre second string DE to an outstanding starting LB. The 3/4 is also well suited for Hobson. As far as Robertson, he was good in the 4/3 one year when he had Ferguson next to him who by the way is as good a 3/4 DT as he was a 4/3 DT. The reality is Robertson who has shown himself to be a top player in spurts is grossly over paid as either a 3/4 or 4/3 DT at this point. The only player the 4/3 has really hurt is Vilma but even Vilma in 05, who was a tackling machine, was a tackling machine in the defensive backfield. The reality is both Vilma and DRob were both impacted by the loss of Ferguson who essentially was a decent 3/4 DT. It just shows you that we have a ton of money tied up in two players who still need protection to be effective. We would be far more effective with a solid NT who would cost us far less than Drob, we also don't need to over pay for Vilma in the 3/4 when a good tackeling big ILB would be far cheaper long term. This would help us spend the money on a CB and pass rusher which is what this team will need to become an elite team.
Robertson made Feguson alot of money in 2004, Robertson wasn't a top DT b/c Ferg was next to him. In '05 Roberston was playing hurt all year and last year he played very well again for us even though he is better suited for the 4-3. Ellis sure didn't play like he is better suited for the 3-4, he was a PB player in the 4-3. It did hlp Thomas and Hobson but we still have better 3-4 personnel and Vilma was our best defensive player so changing obviously hurt him even though he was better than the #s indicated. I agree partially w/ your last paragraph. We sure could use ahuge NT but I'd like to keep Vilma and see what he could do behind a huge NT. I also think we should give dewayne a chance at DE but w/ all the DE's we have now I am not sure that will happen.
In the 4 years that Ferguson was healthy and played 16 games for the Jets he was better than any year Robertson had with the Jets in terms of Tackles, assists and sacks. Robertson, like Vilma needs protection to be effective and he is highly over paid.
Ferguson's rookie year was the only year he was better than Dewayne's 04 season. Ferguson has done nothing since leaving the Jets while Dewayne had a very good year last year w/o him.
Dwayne at best sucked for about 10 games last year and had a pretty good 3 or 4 half games down the stretch. Ferguson is an old man now and should be out of football. Robertson should be in he's absolute prime right now and has yet to produce at Feguson's level when he was healthy and a Jet for fractions of the cost. Robertson is an over paid, under producing cap killer.
Dewayne didn't suck for 10 games, he struggled for a few games early in the year which was understandable since he was in a new system playing out of position. He is overpaid based on overall production though.
Ferguson, post-injury, produced at a good level for us for a single season. And it was when he was playing on a line with 3 1st round picks. I'm not going to say it was Robertson who made him look good, but Ferg certainly didn't draw very many double-teams that season.
Sorry Abyz I just don't agree with you. 1998 Ferguson had a great year playing with the likes of Ernie Logan, Bobby Hamilton, Dorian Boose, Ronnie Dixon and Rick Lyle. He was our best Defensive line player on arguably the best Jets D since the mid 80's. He also had very solid years in 02, 03 and 04. Robertson had a nice run at the end of 04 and the end of 06. He has never put up 3 seasons as good as Ferguson did with the Jets. Ferguson was also I believe a very late draft pick.
Oh, come on, WB. Our entire line was dogmeat against the run in 02 and 03. No, he didn't have much help next to him, but I watched the guy turtle over again and again, regardless of whether or not he was double-teamed. The stats don't show it, but the games did. He flat-out sucked to the point where I wanted his ass cut. I couldn't stand the guy until 04.
02 and 03 Teddy was running the D, you can't blame any player for the way teams ran on us we were just bad all around on D.
He was ok in '02(Josh Evans was the key to that DL), he was poor in '03(he has some decent #s b/c teams ran it down our throats and held the ball 35-40 mins a game. He had a evry good '04 but that was thanks to playing alongside Robertson who the O's focused on and freed up Ferg.
It's kind of hard to sort out who was the reason the Jet's run D sizzled in 2004, mainly because the Jet's run D had been really poor prior to that and has been really poor since. Footballoutsiders.com has a fairly sophisticated ranking system for run D that takes into account strength of opponent and actual results and tries to put together a proximate ranking of how the run D's rank based on that. They've gone all the way back to 1997, which coincidentally is when Bill Parcells came to the Jets and installed a 3-4. This is what they have for the Jets in terms of ranking their run D over the period 1997-2006: 1997 - 24 (Ferguson/3-4) 1998 - 11 (Ferguson/3-4) 1999 - 24 (Ferguson/3-4) 2000 - 10 (Ferguson/3-4) 2001 - 22 (Ferguson/4-3) 2002 - 31 (Ferguson/4-3) 2003 - 32 (Both/4-3) 2004 - 5 (Both/4-3) 2005 - 28 (D-Rob/4-3) 2006 - 32 (D-Rob/3-4) I think it's pretty clear from looking at the chart that the Jet's run D was pretty middle of the road under Parcells in his 3-4. It varied from bottom of the top dozen to bottom of the second dozen. In Herm's 4-3 the run D was just really bad with the exception of Donnie Henderson's effort in 2004. Of the 4 teams that D-Rob has been part of 3 of them have trailed the rest of the league significantly in run D and 2 of them have been dead last. So it's really hard to argue that he has brought more to the table than Ferguson did. 2004 was the one year the Jet's run D has been good lately and they were both there. The one thing that jumped out at me from the chart of course is that letting Ferguson get out of town after 2004 was yet another fairly ridiculous Bradway move. There are so many of those at this point that it's nearly impossible to tote them up. And not that it means anything, because it doesn't, but Dallas 3-4 defense ranked 22 against the run in 2005 and 8 against the run in 2006. So as soon as Ferguson got back into a 3-4 the toggle between below average and good resumed for his team.
Ferguson has done NOTHING w/ Dallas and Bradway tried to re-sign him, if he would have broke the bak to re-sign him it would have been a ridiculous move. 2005 had NOTHING to do w/ Ferg being gone, we were injury ravaged everywhere. Ferg was a good to very good player for us at times but he career was not going up and to pay him the money Dallas paid for him would have been foolish.
