Man, I miss Wes Welker. It’s easy to kind of forget when you don’t see someone all that often. He’s not a huge social media users and he’s not a media personality so the only time I ever really hear from Wes is on those Dr. Leonard hair commercials. (Lettuce looks great by the way, Wes) So to hear him tell this story from his perspective 9 years later is hilariously awkward. Not to mention, a bit of shade thrown at Belichick there! And in case you forgot the bizarre yet legendary Rex Ryan foot joke press conference, here it is in all it’s glory.
NY Post – Quarterback Mark Sanchez is putting away his helmet and heading to ABC/ESPN to be a college football analyst, The Post has learned.
Sources tell The Post the former Jets quarterback’s main job will be in ABC’s lead college football studio, where he will join Kevin Negandhi and Jon Vilma. Sanchez is replacing Mack Brown, who left to coach North Carolina.
The Catch. The Immaculate Reception. The Butt Fumble. There are certain plays in NFL history where you just say two or three words and everyone knows exactly what you’re talking about and where they were when it happened. Luckily for me I was a part of NFL lore because I actually attended The Butt Fumble game at the Meadowlands. I saw that glorious play on Thanksgiving night 2012 with a bunch of my buddies. Since it was Thanksgiving we had been eating and drinking for about 8 hours leading up to the game so saying I *saw* the play is technically accurate even if it didn’t fully register up in the 300s section.
I do however vividly remember the stadium announcers not even addressing what had just happened and just moving along like it was business as usual. Thank god for high def cameras though so this incredible performance could live on in the football archives forever.
Oh and Lenny Kravitz played the halftime show that game. What a night.
Anyways, shout out to Mark “the Sanchize” Sanchez for a head scratching yet decent career. He led the Jets to BACK TO BACK AFC CHAMPIONSHIP GAME APPEARANCES as we would hear for years and years despite not winning any of them. He was a solid if unspectacular quarterback, but if you remember it was a shock the Jets traded all the way up to No. 5 to draft him. Especially after his coach at USC and current Seahawks coach Pete Carroll was a pretty big asshole when asked about his assessment of Sanchez turning pro.
Looking back he was probably right as Sanchez was the the full time starter at USC for only one season before skipping his senior year to go pro and immediately being crowned the savior in New York and starting as a rookie.
He’ll forever be linked to Rex Ryan as the two spearheaded the most successful era of Jets football since the Bill Parcells days. That was a fun time to be a Patriots or a Jets fan because both teams were very good and the Jets loved to talk so it led to some heated rivalries. Theres still players from those late 2000s Jets teams that I despise like Bart Scott.
Can’t Wait til your radio show gets cancelled.
So Sanchez may have only thrown 20+ touchdowns once in a season and may have thrown three interceptions in a 45-3 blowout to the Patriots on Monday Night Football, but he seemed like a genuinely likable guy. Sure he had some weird photoshoots
but who hasn’t?
I don’t know if I’ve ever identified with a pro athlete more than the time Sanchez got busted sneaky crushing a hotdog on the bench.
I respect that move.
Well, Sanchez is off to ESPN where I think he will actually be a great football personality. A good looking dude with some charisma and legitimate NFL playing experience? Sanchez and fellow USC alum Matt Leinart will be the deadliest duo on the LA circuit since the days of Leo Dicaprio and Tobey Maguire.
ESPN – The New York Giants cleaned house on Monday, firing coach Ben McAdoo and general manager Jerry Reese in the midst of a 2-10 season…Mara said he and co-owner Steve Tisch met and “agreed it was pointless to wait any longer to make these changes.” “This has been the perfect storm this season,” Mara said. “Everything that could have gone wrong this season has gone wrong.”
This is like the market having a correction. Eli was not playing well, but the entire Giants organization is a dumpster fire currently so to bench him for a 27-year-old Geno Smith was not the solution. It was handled so poorly that the coach got fucking fired for it a week later. So did the GM! Look, if the Giants had some young 1st round pick riding the pine, I would have been totally fine with seeing what the kid’s got. Its basically how Eli got his start, with the Giants benching veteran QB and Super Bowl champion Kurt Warner. But to bench him for the guy we all already know is trash, even the guy who drafted him in Rex Ryan said so, is just laughable.
So what do the Giants do? Fire EVERYBODY. Geno actually played pretty decent, but the Giants still lost. And being a head coach in the NFL is a lot more than just x’s and o’s. You are essentially the CEO. Its more like being a politician. You have to keep certain constituencies happy, you have to make tough choices, and then you also have to perform. The only guy who gets away with being a clown to the media is Bill Belichick and thats because he’s been to SEVEN fucking Super Bowls in the past 16 years. He gets the benefit of the doubt. Ben McAdoo does not get that same privilege. So when he created an absolute shit storm and made national headlines for benching the best QB in franchise history with the same tact as a high school coach, it was only a matter of time until he got the ax.
Benny with the good hair flew a little too close to the sun and he got burned. Dude started feeling himself just a bit too much. Once McAdoo went from this:
to this:
you just knew it was curtains for this guy. Can’t walk around pretending to be The Cooler from Road House and start 2-9 then bench the beloved franchise QB and live to talk about it.
PS – If I was Eli Manning, this just pisses me off even more. Oh you mean that 200+ games started streak that I earned over the course of 10+ years, we pissed that away to let Geno start for a week and then bring me back after you fired everybody? All those consecutive starts down the tubes just for a one week vacation? Yea cool, no problem, I won’t hold ANY resentment towards you guys for that one. Players can say records and numbers don’t matter, but its bullshit because they do.
1,000-1. Those are the Jets odds of winning the Super Bowl. The same odds as the Warriors NOT making the playoffs. Insane. Just for comparisons sake, the Patriots odds to win the Super Bowl are currently 11/4. Just slightly better.
I guess if you’re a Jets fan, the one saving grace is that this year they are intentionally bad. Sure if they had really tried they still wouldn’t have been great, but by getting rid of Brandon Marshall, Eric Decker, Sheldon Richardson and other players they have basically punted on the season. And as painful as this season will be for those dummies in green, its a smart play long term. Especially with a pretty solid looking crop of top QB prospects this year. UCLA’s Josh Rosen looked like a goddamn stud this weekend.
But it is the Jets, so odds are they luck into like 3-4 wins and lose out on a franchise QB. It really is amazing to have witnessed three peaks and valleys in the Jets franchise all while the Patriots have remained consistently dominant the entire time. Think about it. We’ve witnessed the rise (and fall) of Eric Mangini, the Rex Ryan era featuring the roughly 3 year reign of Bart Scott and the mouthy assholes, and most recently the moderately successful 1-year reign of Todd Bowles and Ryan Fitzpatrick before falling back to earth and saying screw it lets be REALLY bad.
All sandwiched between a mere 5 Patriots Super Bowl victories. What a goddamn shadow over the New York Jets of New Jersey.
PFT – So how much will former Jets and Bills coach Rex Ryan make over the next three years as an employee of ESPN? Probably not a dime. Per a source with knowledge of the situation, Ryan’s contract with the Bills has offset language that applies not only to other coaching jobs but also to broadcasting jobs. Thus, with $5.5 million due to Ryan for each of the next three years, the biggest winners in light of Ryan’s employment at ESPN are owners Terry and Kim Pegula, who will be getting credit for every dollar Ryan earns at ESPN, up to $5.5 million per year.
Well that’s not entirely true. He’s not working for free, but because of a clause in his contract that covers broadcasting jobs as well as other coaching jobs, any money he gets paid over the next couple of years will split the difference with what the Bills owe him.
How about the Pagula’s with the big brain thinking? “Yea, if we shit can you we are 100% more worried about having to still pay you to bullshit on Sunday NFL Countdown than actually landing another coaching job.” Good for Rex though, either way the guy gets paid $5.5 million a year. As a head coach? Meh. As a guy with a mic in his face?
At least this way he can literally say whatever he wants. We gotta get back to the days of “Lets go eat a goddamn snack” Rex. This fat bastard was built to be a TV personality.
ESPN – Running back LeSean McCoy and wide receiver Sammy Watkins, the Buffalo Bills’ two biggest stars on offense, say discipline among players was lacking under coach Rex Ryan, who was fired Tuesday…. “Then the coaches have to be hard on us, not scared of us. Get at us, yell at us, curse at us. Whatever to get the player to do that job the best he can, that’s what they need to do.”
I don’t mean to harp on the Bills this week, but come on. This is why they say all men love a uniform or that people crave discipline and structure in their life. The inmates were literally running the asylum and ran “player’s coach” Rex Ryan right out of town. And whats the first fucking thing they say once he’s out as coach?
The coaches can’t be “scared of us.”
Can’t have it both ways guys. Like talk about the pot calling the kettle black. You’re complaining about not being held accountable while also blaming other people for why your team sucks. Let the streak of missing the playoffs continue!
After 8 years as a Head Coach, all in the AFC East, Rex just got canned by Buffalo from his second HC gig less than 2 seasons in. Is this the end of Rex as a head coach? It very well might be. He’s obviously gonna have multiple high paying offers to do TV next season. The guy is wildly entertaining with a bunch of catch phrases spawned from his time on Hard Knocks.
I don’t know if he has the piss and vinegar to say “fuck you guys I’m a head coach” and hunt for a HC job. I did laugh out loud though at the ESPN update announcing the move: “Rex Ryan fired by Bills…Rob Ryan also relieved of his duties.” Uhh yea, you’re fired…and take your fucking brother with you.
I just think the guy is a prototypical coordinator. Highly knowledgeable in one area, pretty loose, gets along with the players etc. But he hasn’t been able to put it all together. Now a lot of head coaches in the NFL specialize on just one side of the ball and will defer to their coordinators while they act as more of a CEO of the team, but that ain’t Rex.
So if this is the end for Rex, I will miss you dearly. This guy singlehandedly revived the Patriots/Jets rivalry. He built a roster of hateable, mouthy assholes that competed with and beat the Pats on a few big occasions. I’ll always remember the bitter, bitter humble pie after the loss to the Jets in the 2010 playoffs, which I never saw coming because of the 45-3 thrashing of them in the regular season. Those games were heated. The Jets were finally good enough to legitimately threaten the Pats. Rex’s Jets were ultimately brought down by a mediocre offense lead by the immortal Mark Sanchez (never forget the 3 INT game from LEIGH BODDEN), but from like 2009-2011 this was a rivalry again with palpable hate between the fan bases. I still take great joy in mocking the Jets fans and their 09-10 BACK TO BACK AFC CHAMPIONSHIP GAME APPEARANCES. Sounds like a shitty Colts banner.
I think that heated rivalry ended though when the Patriots put a bullet in Fireman Ed and the entire Jets franchise on national TV with the Butt Fumble beatdown on Thanksgiving 2012. Best football game I’ve ever been to still to this day.
PS – Is it just me or was Fireman Ed the worst firefighter ever? What, are there no fires on Sunday, Ed? I mean, I don’t want to be cliche, but you know what Belichick would say to the guy?
The 300s 