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New Jersey – On the eve of the Jets big press conference on Thursday, we take a look at a problem that John Idzik might want to look into, or maybe not.
The leaks continue, and they probably aren’t going to stop anytime soon.
While Mike Pettine is gone, it’s foolish to think the leaks started and ended with him. WFAN’s Mike Francesa claims that Pettine was Manish Mehta’s biggest source in the building.
It does way beyond that.
By the way, don’t expect the supposed Pettine pipeline to dry-up now. In fact, if it does exist, as Francesa suggests, Pettine will likely turn into an amazing resource for those he leaked stuff to in Florham Park.
Pettine is still in the division. He will be facing the Jets twice a year. Pettine will be on top of what the Jets are doing, looking at a lot of film of the Jets preparing for the two match-ups.
He’s could easily transition from “Jets source” to “an unnamed NFL assistant.” Don’t expect him to disappear.
But getting back to my original premise about the leaks continuing – let’s take a closer look.
While Pettine and a few other assistants are gone, there are still a lot of holdovers on the football side from last year.
And the personnel department remains intact. While Idzik replaces Mike Tannenbaum as GM, everything underneath that position is still in place.
You have to give Jake Steinberg of the Jets Blog credit. He is getting a lot of Jets transactions. He has somebody in the building. Good for him. I’m not going to criticize somebody for having a good source.
Last night, he broke the story that Tim McDonald is coming to the Jets as the secondary coach. He also had the Jets signing former University of Cincinnati WR Vidal Hazelton today.
Steinberg is a college freshman. What he is doing is pretty remarkable.
He’s got somebody feeding him stuff, and good for him.
Mehta had a story today that Bobby April Jr. is coming to the Jets are a quality control coach.
How do you get something like that, unless it’s leaked from somebody in the building?
Who breaks quality control coach stories? It’s not something you scour the country trying to find.
I’m not going to be Eugene McCarthy here and point fingers at sources (like Francesa did), but I have a sneaking suspicion on who the leakers are.
But I’m not going there.
Good for Jake and Manish – keep up the good work. Seriously.
I’m just saying, nothing seems to be changing.
As one long-time Jets’ beat writer said to me recently, “Rex doesn’t care about leaks.”
That certainly seems to be the case. Think about it – about a year ago, Manish had that story with myriad unnamed people trashing Mark Sanchez.
Did anybody get to the bottom of that mess? Clearly not. Look what happened this past season. It was the worst year as far as leaks and unnamed people quotes than I’ve ever seen.
As for Idzik, we will see what his position is on this issue. He’s been on the job less than a week. He’s got a lot on his plate right now.
But clearly the infrastructure for the leaks, even with certain people gone, is still up and running.
January 23, 2013
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