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John Idzik addressed the media today, about his decision, along with other Jets officials, to trade for mercurial WR Percy Harvin.
Over the last year, Harvin has had fights with Seattle wide receivers Doug Baldwin and Golden Tate (now with Detroit), and refused to go back into the recent Seattle-Dallas game in the fourth quarter. Pete Carroll had seen enough.
What do the Jets think of his act?
“We did a ton of background,” Idzik said. “As always we will do our due diligence in player acquisition. No different in this case. I just so happen to know a lot of people in Seattle very closely. So, I guess I had that advantage too. We had very forthright conversations about Percy, and what happened there. I decided it was prudent to move forward.”
To me, this is a strange answer. Seattle just unloaded a player, 18 months after trading first, third and seventh round picks to Minnesota for his services. Seattle just go rid of a player who they gave a six-year, $67 million contract, with $25.5 million in guaranteed money, also 18 months ago.
So who did Idzik talk to there, in the Seattle organization, that gave him piece of mind to trade for the player?
Hey, if you want to take a flyer on him, fine, but I’m confused on how talking to the people who just fired Harvin made Idzik want to go ahead with this trade.
How concerned are the Jets with Harvin’s behavior in Seattle?
“A player’s behavior on and off the field is always important to us,” Idzik said. “It’s about the player, it’s about the person. That’s why we do our due diligence. That said, you never know how a player is going to behave, react, respond, until you put him in your environment. Every environment is different. In Percy’s case, the University of Florida, Minnesota, Seattle, they are all different environments than here in New York. We feel like we have a very healthy environment for players. That’s a tribute to the character that we have in our locker room currently. I think Percy will be the benefactor of that. So, I think we have got to let that play out, and let’s see how he responds. But, we have a very healthy environment for Percy Harvin.”
Was it a healthy environment for Mike Goodson and Santonio Holmes?
This idea that people behave differently in different environments is a little bit of a flawed philosophy. Harvin, who has enormous talent as a player, has had behavioral issues not just at UF, Minnesota and Seattle, but also in high school.
This idea that “you never know how a player is going to behave, react, respond, until you put him in your environment,” is somewhat naïve thinking. Past behavior is a pretty good indicator of what might happen in the future. It’s hard for people to change. Some can, most can’t.
Will the trade for Harvin help Geno Smith?
“I think it helps our offense,” Idzik said. “Whenever you add a player of Percy’s caliber to our offense, it not only helps Geno, it helps everybody around him. That’s what we anticipate from Percy.”
Harvin might help Smith, but what will also help him is the schedule lightening up. Smith tends to have a better chance to lead the Jets to wins over teams with middle-of-the-road quarterbacks. I don’t mean that to be disrespectful, but I’m just dealing with reality.
While Harvin should help the Jets’ offense with his explosiveness, good receivers can’t help quarterbacks with field vision, reading defenses, progressive scans, decision-making and pocket presence.
How much did DeSean Jackson help RGIII (before he got hurt he wasn’t playing well) and Kirk Cousins in Washington?
We will see how this works out. On a human level, you would hope Harvin can get his anger management issues under control. That isn’t a good problem for any of us to have.
But the Jets pushing the “fresh start initiative,” is a little Pollyanna.
If life was only that simple where you can erase your past, your mindset, and act like from this point on, everything will be different, this would be a better world.
It didn’t work with Goodson or Holmes, perhaps it will work here.
It will be interesting to see how this pans out.
October 20, 2014
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