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Phoenix – You should never govern . . .
. . . a football team by public opinion polls, so this kind of thing generally needs to be ignored, there continues to be a lot of negativity on social media about the concept of Jonotthan Harrison starting at center for the Jets.
It’s not based on film study, but more of a narrative that has taken off like wild fire.
I spoke to a Jets official at the owner’s meeting who said the team felt that Harrison played well late last season after taking over as the starting center for Spencer Long, who had a finger issue impacting his snapping.
This whole narrative that Harrison can’t do it is bull, and based in part, on Matt Paradis’ agent, pushing his client, who is coming off a broken leg, on Jets fans on social media.
Look, I’m not making Harrison into Kevin Mawae, but he’s a capable center.
And behind him is Jon Toth, a four-year starting center in the SEC at Kentucky, who I hear good things about.
Could the Jets add another center in free agency or the draft, of course, but this isn’t the red alert social media would lead you to believe . . .
Every year at the NFL owner’s meeting, a big part of the event is the media breakfast with all 32 coaches. It goes on for an hour and you can cover a lot of ground.
It was alway an important reason to attend the event if you are a beat writer.
That really isn’t the case anymore, at least with certain teams.
Some teams have decided to make the entire hour with each coach as a made-for-their-website event, and stream the whole breakfast round table with each coach live.
This wasn’t always the case.
So if you were monitoring Twitter this morning during Gase’s press briefing at the breakfast, you saw tweets from various beat-writers, some where here in Phoenix, some weren’t, but you wouldn’t know the difference as a fan on Twitter.
And I’m not going to out those who weren’t here, because it’s not even my point.
Because in a way, what those writers did, by not coming here, was smart- they saved their papers a lot of money, and we all know how much newspapers are struggling these days to make a profit.
The flight cross country is expensive and the hotels are a fortune in his area right now with tons of baseball fans here, from places like Chicago, to watch spring training games.
Look, I’m not complaining, I’m just dealing with reality. If you are a newspaper editor, why would you send your beat writers to Arizona for these meetings, with the big event being a media breakfast, now streaming live on their websites.
Just cover it from home, and save a ton of money.
I ended up not staying at Gase’s table, and decided to go talk to other coaches.
After all, I don’t work for the Jets’ website.
I’m a beat-writer trying to come up with original content.
Like I asked Jon Gruden why he traded Kelechi Osemele.
“A lot of it has to do with the salary cap,” Gruden told JC. “That leaves a big void for us at left guard, but a lot of it had to do with salary cap and making other acquisitions. He was hurt (last year). He missed a lot of time. Hopefully he has a great off-season, gets in great shape and delivers for the Jets. Because if he does, he’s a formidable beast, I will tell you that.”
March 26, 2019
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