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I’m not going to lie, I hate this week, and can’t wait for it to be over with.
Get the confirmation bias and self-fulfilling prophecies out of the way, and let’s get ready for some football on opening day.
When you release wide receiver Brandon Smith, who had an outstanding camp and preseason, please don’t preach to me about open competition.
Even if you bring him back to the practice squad, it’s irrelevant.
What did he have to do this summer to make the regular roster out of camp, walk on water, and part the Red Sea?
Like I wrote yesterday, barring injuries, they probably knew what the roster would look like before camp.
In the NFL, for the most part, “competition” is window dressing.
Football roster construction coming out of the spring and summer work is rife with confirmation bias. There is no way around it.
It’s a tremendously flawed system, often sans merit.
I know many of my long-time readers are tired of me howling at the moon about this, so I try to low-key it a little this week.
Will get off the soapbox after today.
But Smith getting cut, even if he is brought back, tells you all you need to know about the fix being in with most of the roster before camps start.
As for Malachi Corley, somebody with a lot of friends from the previous staff, and who is buddies with a lot of players, did a hatchet job on his character.
I’m not going to get into all that. Just going to stick to football.
The Jets’ history of destroying young receivers needs to stop – Corley, Elijah Moore, Denzel Mims, Stephen Hill – I could go on.
Florham Park has turned into a meat grinder for young wideouts.
Look, I know nothing about what was going on behind the scenes with Corley, but all I can tell you is, he hardly got any reps this summer.
For most of the camp, he was in the witness protection program.
You can sit here all day and attack his character, and talk about his fumble against Houston, but how was he supposed to show his wares when he was like the Maytag Repairman this summer as far as action?
Let’s be honest, once Arian Smith was picked, it was pretty much over for Corley.
The new staff had no equity in Corley, but plenty in Corley.
For goodness sake, if Brandon Smith, who they inherited from the previous regime, couldn’t make the roster out of camp after one of the better camps I’ve seen from a receiver in recent years (he had a better camp than Garrett Wilson), how was Corley going to make it?
Like Corley, the Jets’ new regime had no equity in Brandon Smith.
I’m not a special pleader for Corley, but they were probably done with him before they took the field in the spring, barring injuries.
And how do you expect a player to make a case for himself when he hardly gets any reps?
The system is so flawed and off-putting to me, I need to vent once a year, and today is the day.
Starting tomorrow, I’m focusing on the Jets’ opener against Pittsburgh.
All these teams that talk about competition can talk to the hand as far as I’m concerned.
Brandon Smith got cut?
Are you freakin kidding me?
And I don’t even care if they bring him back.
Irrelevant.
When you cut a guy who did what he did this summer, the evaluation system is flawed.
And this isn’t a Jet-centric point; it’s a problem all over the NFL.
Love baseball in this regard.
A true meritocracy.
August 27, 2025
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