IT took one 4-12 season and one Giants Super Bowl cham pionship and ride down the Canyon of Heroes to transform Woody Johnson from tightwad to spendthrift.
Johnson pulled up at Weeb Ewbank Hall with a wheelbarrow filled with moolah, and GM Mike Tannenbaum has been tossing it around the NFL like a drunken sailor – to the tune of $137.5 million ($63.5 million in guarantees) – and counting.
It is as if Johnson showed up at the start of free agency and heard NFL commissioner Roger Goodell announce: “Gentlemen, start your checkbooks!”
Gang GREEN indeed. J-E-T-S: Just Enjoy the Spending.
The new Jets who Eric Mangini hope will torment Bill Belichick enough to dust off his video camera include left guard Alan Faneca, the crown jewel of bounty; pass-rushing OLB Calvin Pace; right tackle Damien Woody and mountainous nose tackle Kris Jenkins, the replacement for Dewayne Robertson.
Does it make the Jets one of the early winners? Not necessarily. When you spend this kind of money, you better be right. Ask Daniel Snyder and the Redskins.
Giants GM Jerry Reese’s big free agent a year ago was LB Kawika Mitchell, and everyone crying then around East Rutherford is laughing now. But at least it shows they’re trying, and it gives Jet Nation hope.
The Jets significantly have upgraded their offensive line, but if Jenkins isn’t the run-stuffing messiah that the Jets need him to be, and if Pace doesn’t start making more of an impact than his career high of six sacks, then Tannenbaum and Mangini will have some ‘splainin’ to do to the owner.
With Faneca, Jenkins and Woody all hovering around the age of 30, it would seem to enhance Chad Pennington’s chances of reclaiming the starting quarterback job next summer. The Jets left Pennington naked at the start of last season and Kellen Clemens at the end of last season when they exiled Pete Kendall and asked Thomas Jones to be Jim Brown behind a very offensive line.
The 2008 Jet Blueprint: If you don’t have an elite quarterback, make sure you can run the ball and stop the run and ask the quarterback you do have to manage the game.
So if you add Faneca, and plug him in between promising center Nick Mangold and developing left tackle D’Brickashaw Ferguson, and then add Woody, Jones will be better than 3.6 yards per rush, and if Jenkins can keep his weight down and his motivation up and be everything that Robertson could not be in Eric Mangini’s 3-4, then MLB David Harris will be everything that Jonathan Vilma could not be, which is a nightmare for AFC East runners Marshawn Lynch, Lawrence Maroney and Ronnie Brown.
And if the Jets can grab Arkansas RB Darren McFadden in next month’s draft . . .
“There’s definitely a sense of urgency to turn things around,” Faneca said yesterday at Weeb Ewbank Hall. “I think the attitude’s right in the building; making changes and being aggressive in the offseason only helps.”
Faneca is the prototypical Mangini player: tough, smart, a team captain with the Steelers and seven-time Pro Bowler.
“He enjoys playing the game and will be a source of leadership and toughness,” Mangini said.
“I would describe myself as a thinking man, I guess,” Faneca said. “I have a good vision of the field. Working well in space is probably another quality of mine that helps me out a lot.”
No five-year, $40 million contract will make this cat a fatcat. “I’m my own worst critic,” Faneca said. “If I could ever please myself, I’d be good.”
What, you think word of Mangini’s long, hard practices scared him? “I’m not the kind of guy who’s gonna make a decision to run from a difficult situation,” Faneca said. “If anything, it swayed me in this direction.”
Faneca was convinced that the Jets were headed in the right direction following a conversation with Mangini. “It was a gut decision,” Faneca said.
A decision reached when the Jets hit him in the gut with $21 million guaranteed.