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No, he didn’t pick him.
As most of you know by now, ESPN’s Rex Ryan insulted Bill Belichick and Geno Smith in one quote.
“Let’s give [Belichick] somebody else, let’s give him Geno Smith, let’s give him whoever, and let’s see how many Super Bowls he would have won,” Ryan said. “We saw the answer was zero in Cleveland.”
I’m not going to get into all of Geno’s tweets firing back at Rex Ryan, which he certainly had the right to do, but I let’s just focus on one thing he said.
“Same guy who drafted me,” Smith tweeted about Ryan.
Not true.
John Idzik was the GM at the time, and controlled the draft. That is how the Jets corporate structure works. The GM picks the players, and the coach coaches the players.
Idzik, who’s a very nice man (not a war criminal), didn’t have much of a scouting background when he got the Jets’ job. He was picked by business people for the Jets’ GM job, not football people. He’s a very good contract and cap guy, and that clearly resonated with the business people who were picking the GM.
Idzik’s limited scouting background manifested itself when he picked Smith in the second round, and hitched his wagon to him, which was a mistake that contributed to Idzik getting fired. The NFL is a QB-driven league, and if you hitch your wagon to the wrong QB, you aren’t going to last long as a GM. Smith is best served being a #2 QB, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
As much as a lot of fans didn’t like Idzik, he still might be the GM if he had nailed the QB position and landed an elite signal-caller. That is how important that position is in NFL football. He probably wouldn’t still be here, but there would’ve been a much better chance if he somehow found a franchise QB. Obviously, he made other mistakes, like picking Dee Milliner in the first round, after, as Jets Confidential had learned, the team doctors advised him not to, because of medical concerns. Idzik picked Milliner, and he couldn’t stay healthy, and is already out of the league.
Smith was a system QB at West Virginia, who needed a lot of work entering the league because college spread systems are nothing like NFL playbooks.
Rex clearly wasn’t a big fan of Smith, but personnel was out of his control, and when the GM and head coach aren’t on the same page with the roster, it’s hard to win.
And that problem continued with Mike Maccagnan and Todd Bowles, who, as Jets Confidential learned, weren’t even speaking to each other for a long stretch of time. Imagine an NFL coach and GM not even being on speaking terms and trying to run a team together.
Then it didn’t take long for Maccagnan and Adam Gase to not be on the same page, and was a factor in the GM getting bounced.
So it’s essential, moving forward, that Joe Douglas and Gase work better together than Idzik/Ryan, Maccagnan/Bowles and Maccagnan/Gase.
People talk about this great relationship Douglas and Gase had working together for one year with the Chicago Bears. But keep in mind, but neither had a lot of power there. Neither was the GM or the head coach. The dynamic now is way different than they had in Chicago. Douglas wasn’t telling Gase who his players were going to be in Chicago.
We have all been told about how great the relationship is between Douglas and Gase. Is it? Who knows? Time will tell. If Gase is pissed at some of the players Douglas gives him, let’s see how the relationship holds up. We shall see.
But the Geno Smith chapter of Jets history is a perfect example of what happens when the GM and coach aren’t on the same page.
Yes, Geno, you have every right to be mad about Rex’s cheap shot.
But no, he didn’t pick you.
April 10, 2020
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