You can ask any coach in the league about running the ball and will be served a hot plate of similar platitudes. They've never, ever been a run first team. They've been balanced at worst, and skewed in the other direction more frequently. The Jets are a run first team. I don't know why, they spent the entire off-season talking it up, and personnel wise made moves in that direction.
They were pretty open about how they did a ton of research on big plays and how Sparano realized he had to change b/c what he was doing wasn't working. Seeing how passing is up to record levels league-wide it seems likely that the change in philosophy has more to do with the league changing than anything else. Obviously you still have to run some, but the personnel changes reflect that change in philosophy. My big criticism the fact that they did not realize the need sooner.
They didn't think any of those guys had a chance to be an upgrade but Kyle Orton did? I'm not buying it. This isn't just one draft anyway, it's a history of the position not being valued. If Jeff Ireland wanted to draft Matt Ryan in the beginning and was overruled by rotten tuna I can give him a pass... otherwise I think he made a fatal mistake rebuilding this team and that is not putting QB at priority one. Four years now and it's always just 'they didn't like that guy' or 'that guy didn't fall to where they thought he should'. Bargain shopping for QBs.
If this is the case as you say (which I agree with. And it's clear from what we've seen so far); Then why, just why would you make the decision to go with Colombo at RT and Carey at RG? One guy has completely been inadequate at his position the past two years (Colombo) making him a giant question. And the other guy is also a huge question mark as a pass protecting Guard as he's never done it before. Would you not agree that it was irresponsible and/or negligent of this FO or HC/GM to go into the season with that RG/RT combo? Especially if you set out to be a 3 WR passing offense where you envisioned a lot of dump offs to Reggie Bush in space in lieu of running plays.
Yes...thats why I was critical of the front office. We've been making the oline and rb priorities every year but we still can't run the ball.
