Surprised?

Yes, I was surprised that the Jets actually went ahead and did it. But I'm not happy about it.

There are lots of reasons to be unhappy about it. There are lots of reasons to be unhappy. I know I don't have to take them all seriously, but there are some tawdry parts of this already tainted draft process that make me even queasier than usual. Mark Sanchez was selected in a gesture of exceptional draft ballet in large measure because the Jets need a "marquee" player to fill their stadium, to justify their PSL's. And if the blather is to be believed, Shonn Greene was picked because his considerable potential will send a message to the unhappy Thomas Jones. Each of these is worthy of George Steinbrenner in its machinations, and because the Jets have never had a front office that works this way (and that may be a good thing) I am vaguely intrigued.

But it's cynical, isn't it? It's about seats and contracts, not about building a team. It's about short-term goals, not in building a future. How can Mark Sanchez, in a couple of years, possibly fulfill the financial aspirations of a limping football team in the most competitive market in America? On the other hand, the Patriots continue to think for the future, imagining the picks they might get in 2010. We worry about a contract dispute.

Promises, Promises

It's been a while since I last wrote; I'm in the process of buying a house. The word "process" is appropriate. It's a little like a quest, a spirit journey, even a fruitless errand. There's negotiation, duck, fade, feint, rebound, masquerading and even presenting one's rear. The NFL Draft obsesses us because it has all of the qualities of this most American obsession with buying our dreams; it encompasses so many desires of beginning again and creating something entirely new. Most of this is an illusion. The person I will find myself to be on another day in another place is very likely the same person writing this in his t-shirt and boxers on his couch on a Saturday, waiting for the NFL Draft to start.

The Draft itself is filled with illusory promises. What's remarkable is that most of us who have followed football for a couple of decades, if not more, already know this. Most of the time, the draft produces careers tinged with moments of success yet doomed to early ends. The Jets Among Men (shameless, desperate promotion #1), my current life's work, seems to suggest that whether we were picked in the first or third rounds, our careers in football ("ours?") will be short. Football is all about attrition, yet the draft promises immortality to young men in their first expensive suits who put the caps of their new teams awkwardly on their heads. This moment will exist forever. Most of the time, it's a bust. Most of the time, we know it's going to be a bust. When JaMarcus Russell held out for as long as he did after being drafted by the idiotic Raiders, we knew all along (as we know now) that the entire affair was a waste of time.


It's an extension of the constant tests of loyalty we fans in football must endure. We must endure the false promises, the ridiculous hype, the personal shame, the recriminations with every pick. Who knows? This might be the season. No, it's not. In the balcony of Radio City each year, the locals in green and white show up and perform an impromptu opera of disappointment and hope, demanding what they know full well they will never get. If they did not feel this way, they would not be fans, let alone Jets fans.

We need a really good receiver, a really good tight end, and another really good prospect at quarterback if such a one exists after Mark Sanchez. Josh Freeman will not be the answer; I just don't believe a good quarterback can be drafted into the market of New York, except if he plays for the Giants. I would like to see us draft Brandon Pettigrew from OK State. I would also like to believe that Vernon Gholsten will make good on his promise at linebacker after one year with us. But I know it's an illusion. The thing with feathers strikes again.

Harry Kalas 1936-2009

When I was a kid the first voice of football was and always will be Jon Facenda, a Philadelphia TV newsman who was hired by NFL Films to narrate the year-end roundups of teams and best performances. Facenda's normal vocal frequency was similar in timbre and pitch to the Old Testament's Almighty - immortal, distant and imperial.

But when NFL Films did their weekly reviews and Game of the Week, they used Harry Kalas' voice, and it was not until I moved to Philadelphia 17 years ago that I realized that Harry was actually the Philadelphia Phillies' broadcaster. After using CBS' Ray Scott for many years, Ed Sabol turned to yet another Philadelphia voice to describe the weekly action; Harry Kalas' voice always struck me as more genial, warm and conversational than Facenda's voice or Scott's. He was first a football guy to me.

Kalas died today while preparing for yet another on-air assignment for the Phillies, and though we all assume he died doing the thing he loved, it's no consolation to those of us who have relied on him, summer by summer. Some of my co-workers were weeping today at the news, and people talked about it at the end of the workday as if a head of state had passed unexpectedly. A few sentimentally speculated that Kalas was met in the Afterlife by his old sidekick, Richie "Whitey" Ashburn, with some nicely aged scotch.

Like Harry Carey, Skip Carey, Myron Cope, or Johnny Most, Harry belonged to a generation of broadcasters who were themselves larger than life characters. Their work in the booth was enhanced by the broad public appeal they had, for better or for worse. They were always partisan in their loyalties to their teams. And they were a far cry better than the analytical, statistically savvy talking heads of today's play-by-play whose impersonality or haughtiness (not just Joe Morgan's) are a product of a time when the players themselves seem so distant from the emotions they elicit in the fans. Broadcasters like Harry simply reflected a different time, a time lost to sports entirely.

Here he is, getting a chance to call the last out in the last complete season he would do for his beloved Phils, as they won the World Series last Fall. His cohort in the booth, Chris Wheeler, is really the funniest part of the video, but still, it was very rewarding to hear Harry get the call. The last time he had done the honors was 1980. We're all glad he had a chance to repeat before he was gone.

It was an unusual voice, one that sounded almost like someone speaking while breathing in. Yet, particularly as he aged,he took on a mellowing, reassuring sound that reflected, no doubt, the enduring patience of many losing seasons, many lost and miserable games. He was a colorful character in every sense, but Harry's sonorous play-by-play was a gentle current flowing in the background of summer Sunday afternoons, and he accompanied the air conditioner in our bedroom as we fell asleep at night; he faithfully wove together the July and August evenings, creating a routine of saying goodnight to yet another summer night, farewell to yet another summer week. Goodnight, Harry.

NY Jets By The Numbers - #35 (Part 2)

Billy Joe?

That's right. Number 35, running back Billy Joe. "Billy Joe what?" you ask. I know of a Billy Joe Dupree, a Billy Joe Tolliver, a Billy Joe Hoefert, the mysterious "Ode to Billie Joe" that got a name change when it became a movie. But a flesh and blood Billy Joe with no further surname of which to speak? The answer is the same as the one about the one hand clapping; William Joe, running back for the Jets from 1967 to 1969.

Billy Joe. It conjures a hayseed, a country bumpkin. Big ol' Billy Joe. That big fella Billy Joe from Ancora, South Carolina. Big Billy Joe with what looks like a walleye and buck teeth. What do you think of the big city, Billy Joe?

Well, Billy Joe actually played for and graduated from Villanova. Imagine what Billy Joe might have done at Alabama or Auburn had they been integrated? Billy Joe won Rookie of the Year honors for the AFL and then garnered two AFL Championship rings, one with the Buffalo Bills in 1965 and one with the Jets in 1968. By the time he reached Flushing he may have seemed a belated nuisance to most Jets fans since they had rooted against Billy Joe on the nights and days when he played against us. He ran the bench squarely behind Snell, Boozer and Mathis. When Boozer's pernicious corns and bunions acted up in the home game against Boston in 1968, Joe scored three fourth quarter rushing touchdowns in a 48-14 win.

And where is Billy Joe now? In the College Football Hall of Fame, that's where. He's been coaching college football on and off since 1972. This is our Ode to Billy Joe. He's probably the most successful Jets' #35 we've studied and certainly among retired New York Jets he is the most successful football coach. Funny name? Maybe. Maybe it's even worth a Booth Lusteg. Obviously Billy Joe was, and is, a born winner.

****

We can dispense with the niceties. We have three names here from different eras. First there's Ed Kovac. Was he your driver's ed instructor? Your State Farm agent? Well, he played two games for the New York Titans in 1962 in #35 as well. Then there's Del Lee. I'm not sure how many games in #35 he played for the Jets in 1999, but he's in there somewhere and there somewhere out there right now, somewhere. And Tim Newman who's our scab replacement in #35 from the 1987 strike season. I don't even know what position he played. I could find out, but then he crossed a picket line. Nineteen eighty-seven was also the year I went away to college, and my mother had two parting pieces of advice for me: 1) Go to Mass 2) Don't ever cross a picket line. Of course, I'm sure Tim Newman had his reasons. He wanted to play. Don't we all?

Dennis Onkotz always assumed he would, and we can't blame him for assuming it. Drafted by us in the third round in 1970, the Jets had such high hopes for him that they let him wear the uncharacteristic #35 for a linebacker. That was the number he wore at Penn State as he set the standard in the Nittany Lion linebacking tradition to come of Jack Ham, Greg Buttle, Shane Conlon, Andre Collins, Brian Gelzheiser, Lavar Arrington, Brandon Short, Paul Posluszny, and Dan Connor. The full story is here, but he lasted only half a season long with the Jets, at which point Dennis Onkotz - model for those who came after him in Happy Valley - broke his leg and was eventually out of football for good. Just like that. To be fair, 1970 was apparently a popular year (among many) for key Jets players to be on the DL.

Finally, Danny Woodhead. I don't yet know whether Billy Joe or Danny Woodhead gets the Booth Lusteg for sure, but Danny gets a place in a subcategory assigned him alongside Dicks Wood and Felt: a funny name with a funnier redundancy. Nevertheless, Danny Woodhead also gets the Scrappy, an award I just made up this very second for the player most likely to be thus described by a color commentator. The requirements for this award are that the man in question has to remind the fan of Wayne Chrebet, Bruce Harper, Scotty Dierking or Mike Augustinyiak, another #35. Danny Woodhead manages all of these things just by being himself.

But in the real world, Danny Woodhead #35 - who has never played a single regular season game for the Jets - is a kind of 5'7" legend in places where the corn grows very, very high. He is the pride of Chadron State, a star in Nebraska, where most of the great stars traditionally come from Lincoln. Right now in the heartland there are, very possibly, polygamous cults being developed in tribute to his extraordinarily metaphorical stature. Try to grasp that he owns the NCAA single season and career rushing records, which is mind-boggling. No one but our beloved team even considered him for 2008. But then he blew out his knee last July at Hofstra, and though our scrappy fans have a soft spot for the underdog which eludes spoiled rotten Patriot fans, it looks as if Danny Woodhead will probably suffer the same fate as Dennis Onkotz. Another Local Hero has gone over the side of the professional game's Tallahatchie Bridge. Pass the biscuits, please.

On God and the Draft

My recent little Jets draft blunder item, from Toni Monkovic of the Times:

Dewayne Robertson was cut by the Broncos. The Jets moved up in the 2003 draft, trading two first-round picks, to get him at No. 4. That strategy almost never works. And certainly didn’t in this case.

(from Rotoworld):

Broncos released DLs Dewayne Robertson and John Engelberger, LBs Jamie Winborn and Niko Koutouvides, TE Nate Jackson, and SS Marquand Manuel.

The moves save a cool $22.2M under the salary cap. Robertson’s cap figure was $16M, a ridiculous amount for a league-average wave tackle with bum knees. The No. 4 overall pick in 2003, Robertson is 27 but may not have more than a season left in him.

Extra point: The Jets gave up their No. 13 and No. 22 picks to get Robertston. Had they stayed put, they could have chosen from among Troy Polamalu, Calvin Pace, Willis McGahee, Dallas Clark, Larry Johnson, Nick Barnett and Nnamdi Asomugha, all of whom went in the 16-31 range.

Monkovic also quotes Mike Florio of PFT on the relationship American football players (rarely the smartest kids in your college Psych class) have with their understanding of the will of God. Though I sometimes think the draft is God's curse on Gang Green, I remember that the Jets are just inept. God love them.

NY Jets By the Numbers - #35 (Part 1)

The first time I ever heard of someone almost dying was when I was about eight. I had heard that my cousin had fallen to the ground, had punctured his tongue with his teeth and nearly bled to death. Actually, I don't know if he was in any grave danger, but he had to be given stitches in his tongue, which was as close to death as an eight year-old could imagine. Clearly he had been to the edge and back. He had experienced something formidable that I had not, and from thence forward, despite being the same age as I, he always seemed somehow braver and wiser for having experienced something that apparently brushed him so close with mortality.

The second time I ever heard of someone almost dying was when it happened to #35 Mike Augustyniak, who's not a cousin nor a contemporary. He ran in the Jets' backfield from 1981 to 1983, was a graduate of Purdue and only a little taller than Bruce Harper, though only a little shorter than I am now. He was playing well in his rookie year, much to the surprise and delight of everyone green, but Mike Augustyniak also broke two ribs in two separate games. He had been a walk-on in camp and had been given the same kind of platitudes fans would later give to Wayne Chrebet - "hard-nosed," "gutsy," "plucky," "hard-working." Certainly looks it in his picture, doesn't he? The first rib was broken in preseason - no sooner was he on the team than he had broken a rib. No problem. But against the Pats in the regular season, he broke another that punctured a vital organ such that he nearly bled to death internally. He lived and played well later on the year, but I remember my reaction to his near fate, and it spelled the change in my overall worldview from eight year old to twelve: that's what happens when you're plucky and hard-working. You almost die. Hard work will almost kill you.

BJ Askew is not your current #35. He was signed by Tampa Bay just before the beginning of last season, and though I was filled with foreboding about it, and though the Bucs paid him an extraordinary amount of money last year, he gained little more than a neck injury on the ground. Again, football leads you to place where you wish for the injury to another. That, as anyone in any sane, humane spiritual tradition will tell you, is just plain wrong. Nevertheless, I offer here an ironic photo of Askew in dejection, with another famous castoff kneeling near him, lost in his own thoughts. How the wheels of Fate do grind.

Bob Brooks is the second #35 in franchise history, and that, literally, is all I'm going to be able to say about him. Sometimes that's all we have.

As I understand it, the league will very likely go to 18 games in a few seasons, but some men have gone that distance before. Dexter Carter #35 may have had the longest and strangest season of any player, certainly any player in 1995. He went from suiting up for the defending champion San Francisco 49ers for seven games to playing 10 games for the New York Jets. As I recall, Carter preferred playing more of an active role in the backfield with a team that needed him than in a secondary role on a team with plenty of talent. But then a year later, Carter returned to the Niners. Something always told me he was a saucy lad, but I don't know if that's even really relevant. I just remember the 1995 Jets' season as a long, horrible hangover awaiting a worse bender - and I do not necessarily mean that in a literal sense. Back in the safety of San Francisco for the final year of his career in 1996, we assume that Dexter Carter learned his lesson. Don't leave the f@#$ing boat.

Do you know Roger Donnahoo? Does he know you? He is the first #35 in franchise history. He played a single season - the Titans' first - in the number, and as far as the eye can see, this is all he contributed to professional football. He looks in his football card like he has a successful career in defense awaiting him, and possibly even a Senatorial run. The flame burned briefly but brightly for him. He returned an interception and a fumble for touchdowns in 1960. These are the kinds of plays that turn the momentum of the crowd right around, but without a crowd at the Polo Grounds, how would anyone have known that Roger Donnahoo, much less the Titans or their opponents, were doing anything? Was that what kept Roger Donnahoo away from the game he loved? Was it Harry Wismer's bouncing checks? Whither you, Roger Donnahoo?

On November 14, 1976, at Shea Stadium the Jets outright pummeled the famously inept Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who would absolutely have exceeded Detroit's extraordinary 0-16 mark had they been given the opportunity to play 36 games in a season. I've discussed my attendance at this game before and the brief, illusory sense of joy it gave - the kind that a child always needs every once in a while - the ice cream cone before the mumps shot. Just before the end of the first half, with the score 17-0 the Jets' Steve Davis #35 scored a 5-yard touchdown that I recall because it seemed from my vantage somewhere in the Loge that he just barely made it. The ball just appeared to cross the threshold of the end zone. The Jets had taken a 24-0 lead even before the half. There was something in his just barely making it that made it all the more potent to my seven-year old brain. Anything seemed possible in that sweet, terrifying moment - even a seemingly phantom touchdown. I howled at the top of my lungs with abandoned joy at something concrete and real for probably the first time in my life. Steve Davis did that. That's what being a fan is - remembering moments like that. It was the second-to-last touchdown of a career that ended that season. Wherever you are, Steve, thanks.

Scottie Graham #35 was born in Long Beach, Long Island, two days after I was, and two months after the Jets' Super Bowl triumph. He was drafted out of Ohio State by the Steelers, picked up by the Jets, allowed to play two games and then sent to Minnesota for an average runner's career of 1,000-plus total career yards and more than five seasons. Whereas drafted out of the University of Minnesota and raised in the wild, abandoned weedlands of East St. Louis, IL, #35 Kerry Glenn nabbed four interceptions for the Jets in his rookie season of 1985. This raised many expectations for his career, yet he lost out on the next season with a foot injury. Isn't this often the way? He did manage a respectable career with both the Jets and the Fish, but he would never again post such numbers.

"He stretched out his hand desperately as if to snatch only a wisp of air, to save a fragment of the spot... But it was all going by too fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew that he had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever."

NY Jets By the Numbers - #34

Who weeps for #34?

It's not the most distinguished number in football. Alright, there's Sweetness, Walter Payton. But it's a tough sell from there. The first name for #34 that pops into my head is the Buffalo Bills' Jim Braxton, the tough fullback who went in all the directions OJ Simpson would not go and who blocked for OJ in the 70's. Braxton did not live to see OJ's murderous path to disgrace because big Jim died prematurely of lung cancer in 1986.

Johnny Hector

Undistinguished? More like less appreciated. More like one man in the path of the faster man. Johnny Hector played Jim Braxton to Freeman McNeil's OJ Simpson. He lasted longer in #34 than any other Jet listed here. It's difficult to appreciate it now that I'm a day away from 40 years old, but throughout the 1980's, the Jets had a formidably consistent backfield that carried the team's offense through some pretty erratic years. From 1984 to 1988, Johnny Hector finished second in rushing to McNeil. But in 1989, Hector took the top spot. Both men were effectively replaced the following year (with nowhere near the same efficacy) by Blair Thomas and Brad Baxter in the McNeil-Hector roles, respectively. Above all, Johnny Hector was the Jets' durable Jim Braxton every Jets season from my earliest adolescence into my early 20's. This is why he is special to me.

LaMont Jordan

On the other hand, LaMont Jordan was the Jim Braxton for Curtis Martin. He has not gained as many yards as Johnny Hector just yet. After playing second fiddle to the greatest runner in New York Jets history, LaMont then packed his bags for the Oakland Raiders, where he went from being a Jets supporting character to a Raiders' 1,000 yard star (as opposed to thousand-yard stare, which Oakland fans have been wearing behind their makeup now for several years). Jordan was the one bright spot in the bleakest consecutive seasons that Al Davis' skeletal remains have been forced to witness from the comfort of his airtight, oxygen-rich, cell-regenerative compression chamber in Alameda Coliseum. Now, after briefly serving the devil in New England, Jordan is someone else's tertiary fiddle for the Denver Broncos.

Walt Michaels, circa 1958

Did someone mention Al Davis? Slowly I turn, step by step.... How many terrible nights has Walt Michaels awakened, drenched with sweat at the memory of his mistaking the voice of a drunken carouser in Queens for the one belonging to Al Davis? The entire story is found here and is ever-present in Jets lore. Maybe it's a sore spot, or maybe it's just simply a piece of pain that makes the survivor stronger in the presence of Fate's unkind face. Maybe he didn't care when the Jets fired him. Maybe he just needed to get away from the Jets. Still, Joe Walton did only a shade better than his predecessor and mentor, and I still think of the 80's Jets as Walt Michaels' team - one that he nurtured almost intact out of its callow youth in 1977 into a club that was a mere plastic tarp away from the Super Bowl in 1983. We should all have so good a ride. Oh, and Walt Michaels wore #34 for the Jets in 1963, his last year as a pro player. According to the Gods of Wiki, he played one game that year and then became defensive coordinator under Weeb - a position he held onto for a decade. He took it up again in 1976 and stayed on with the franchise until the demons of burdensome competition became too much for this crusty son of the Pennsylvania mines.

Dwight Lowery #34

Respect is hard to come by in this game. Take the case of our current #34, Dwight Lowery. I've noticed that basketball and baseball are trying to find their statistical whiz kids in the manner of baseball's Bill James. KC Joyner is one such writer, and his Blindsided is on my summer reading list. Here he applies some of his statistical geekdom to the New York Jets secondary, most specifically, to the underrated performance of Dwight Lowery. But even so, football statistics will never truly rival the burdensome temptation baseball creates among geeks to analyze, analyze, analyze. Perhaps in this way, we are all a little better off in football. Mr. Lowery's incompletes and yards allowed make him look good and, as one commentator points out, they certainly make the Jets' secondary look more formidable. Just don't start keeping track of his fake-to-take ratios. I mean, I don't even know what that means. Actually, I just made that up.

Bernie Parmalee

Do you remember Bernie Parmalee? I remember how funny the name sounded when I first heard it - when he first started playing for the Dolphins in 1992. But then I think I might also have been confusing him with Eric Bieniemy, who was a star at the University of Colorado in 1990. I don't know what it is about their names (they played at the same position), but for the longest time, I thought that the Dolphins' running back was the Colorado standout who had helped deprive Notre Dame of a National Championship (this was still in the days when I still cared how Notre Dame did - their great years, of course). Bernie Parmalee played two quiet seasons with the Jets and finished his career in 2000. He wore #34 for us. He is not Eric Bieniemy.

Nor is Kenyon Rasheed. Actually, if you want to know about Rasheed, you might do best to read his article on life after the pros, with all of its psychological and professional challenges. That he is currently the CEO of something called Rasheed & Associates makes me a little skeptical, but when I look elsewhere, I see he is also a restauranteur and the founder of a sports consulting firm. So, who am I to say? This is a man who had to endure his last pro year in #34 during the abysmal 1995 season.

Finally, Lee White wore #34 from 1968 to 1970, putting him squarely on the roster when the Jets won the championship. However, I've never seen a clip of him on the field. This does not mean he was not there. It just means that Ed Sabol's team on the ground didn't bother with him. White then moved onto the Los Angeles Rams in 1971, but the Wiki says rather cryptically that "At the Rams he played several games, but found it hard to settle into the area." Huh. The year after that, he played a single season for the Chargers of San Diego. What was it about LA? The smog? the traffic? the women? The uncomfortable slacks in the noonday sun? Will we ever know?