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Mike Pettine went after Kerry Rhodes today in an article on the ESPN New York website by Rich Cimini. Here is Dan Leberfeld’s take . . .
Pettine talked about the transition from Rhodes to former Cleveland safety Brodney Pool, who signed with the Jets this off-season.
“Brodney has humbled himself,” Pettine said. “He understands that, ‘Hey, I don’t know the defense. This defense has done well. I’m just part of it.’ Some of the issues with Kerry were off-the-field stuff. Buying in, I think he struggled with that. Some of the comments he made after he left were kind of indicative of how he felt, that we brought guys up from Baltimore and we leaned too heavily on them. Of course we were going to lean on guys who know the system. That’s the whole point for bringing them in. There were some struggles there that we won’t have with Brodney.”
Okay, where do I start on this one?
First of all, Rhodes was traded on March 6, so what was the point of Pettine going after Rhodes over two months later?
Granted, Pettine hasn’t talked to the media since Rhodes departure and some of the safety’s parting shots, but why not just let it go? Take the high road.
But hey, as a reporter, it’s good when guys sound off like this, so I’m not going to complain.
What does Pettine mean by “off-the-field stuff?”
It’s a little unfair to throw that out there and not explain what it means.
It makes it sound like Rhodes has some “off-the-field” issues. We aren’t aware of any, so we don’t know what Pettine meant by this by this.
Was it that he likes to “tweet” a lot? Who cares?
Is it this so-called acting career? What acting career? That is a media-created angle. Rhodes acting career is about as successful as Dustin “Screech” Diamond. He has no acting career.
There is plenty of blame to go around for Rhodes nightmarish season last year, and I mean plenty.
First of all, we must start with secondary coach Dennis Thurman. When two players with pretty good NFL resumes, Rhodes and Lito Sheppard, flame out under a position coach, he deserves some criticism.
I have to be honest, I heard mixed reviews on Thurman from people in Baltimore.
Rhodes despised Thurman. You don’t need to be a Jets insider to realize this. There was a shouting match between the two at a practice late in the year.
It’s been reported that Rhodes didn’t buy into the program. A big reason for this is because he had such a bad relationship with his position coach.
And he also didn’t like Pettine very much. I knew the relationship was bad when early in the year, and I can’t remember the specific play, but it was a long gain, and there was a broken tackle.
A few days later, in a press conference, when talking about the play, Pettine, mentioned Rhodes by name and said he missed a tackle.
That really got my attention. I’ve been doing this along time, and your rarely hear a coach throw a player under the bus like that.
Then later in the year, around the time of Rhodes demotion, Pettine was asked about the safety not being a gym rate, and he didn’t exactly dismiss the notion.
I’m really getting tired of this angle that Rhodes is distracted by his desire to be a star off-the-field. It’s ridiculous.
Bart Scott does a ton of stuff off-the-field, but we never hear he’s not focused on football.
And Rhodes never really had assignment issues before last season. He was considered a cerebral player before the 2010 season.
Rhodes is a smart guy. He didn’t always play that way last year.
So he deserves some blame for that.
He shouldn’t have let his disdain for Thurman and Pettine get in the way of his preparation.
But it’s probably pretty hard to be a good student when you hate your teacher and principal.
And Rex didn’t help things by being the good cop in all of this, and seemingly staying out of it.
This whole situation was ugly.
And it’s time to move on.
