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Bill Parcells loved to say, “You are what your record says it is.”
I know he was referring to won-loss record, but to me, it also applies to a team’s police blotter.
The Jets have had three players arrested in three months. That’s what the police records say.
In Indy, Todd Bowles and Mike Maccagnan were quick to shootdown that they have a problem.
“I don’t think we have to do anything necessarily different in how we do our process,” Maccagnan said. “These things do come up. These things do happen. We will evaluate as we go forward. We actually feel pretty good about our process, and we’re very thorough.”
“You hit some bumps in the road,” Bowles said. “It’s not going to be squeaky clean, and you deal with them as they come. They’re individual cases.”
Bowles clearly thinks these are isolated incidents and not indicative of systemic problem.
I don’t agree. One is an isolated incident, two arrests are troubling and three arrests is a trend.
But you know what, I blame Maccagnan more than Bowles on this one.
ESPN’s Rich Cimini put it best – “It’s unfair to blame the coach for offseason transgressions. No, it’s bigger than that. This is what happens when you pick players with red flags in their backgrounds: Sometimes you get burned.”
All three players had red flags entering the building.
I’ve I said before, Maccagnan needs to chill out with the Father Flanagan approach. How about just bringing in guys like Jamal Adams and Demario Davis who are really good players with great character? Stop with the “Brother Love Traveling Salvation Show.”
When asked about Rashard Robinson being arrested for having a marijuana-laced candy bar in his car, Bowles said, “That’s a problem we’re not going to have going forward.”
How do you know? He was thrown out of LSU for repeated bad behavior, and then the 49ers moved on from him pretty quick, a team that wasn’t loaded at CB when they traded him.
And Bowles has repeatedly said after bad behavior by Anderson that he “talked to Robby.”
The talks clearly aren’t working.
After Anderson threw his helmet in frustration after the Jets loss to Miami in late October. Bowles said, “We don’t condone anything like that, we don’t tolerate anything like that. It won’t happen again.”
Yes, he hasn’t thrown his helmet, again, yet he spiked the ball on the Patriots sideline, hitting Johnson Bademosi in the facemask. And then he got arrested after the season in South Florida on nine charges.
Here is the point – with people who have issues, you can talk to them, but that often doesn’t prevent the demons from rearing their ugly head again.
Maccagnan needs to bring in players who Todd needs to have less meetings with.
Todd isn’t a psychologist or a counselor. He’s a football coach.
Mike, give him a break.
Also, Mike needs to show leadership here.
“Maccagnan can take his time and gather the facts, but let’s be clear: This is a pivotal moment for the Jets,” wrote Cimini. “Will they take a stand against this kind of recent behavior or will they let it slide? This will tell us a lot about the kind of organization they want to become.”
I totally agree.
This is a huge off-season for the Jets with a ton of cap space, and three picks in the first two rounds. They can take a quantum leap in 2018 if they play their cards right.
But they can’t allow this recent trend to “arrest” their cultural development.
March 1, 2018
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