peterbell Posted January 22, 2010 Report Share Posted January 22, 2010 Ex-coach Eric Mangini still a fan of New York Jets, takes pride in Gang Green's run Gary Myers Friday, January 22nd 2010, 4:00 AM Eric Mangini feels like Pete Best, the drummer replaced by Ringo Starr right before the Beatles made it big. But he says he's not bitter about being fired before the Jets started climbing the charts and is rooting for them to beat the Colts in the AFC Championship Game. And he thinks they can. They don't have to do it Eight Days A Week. They just have to do it Sunday. Mangini was at Disney World with his wife and three young sons Thursday, but he believes it's closer to reality than fantasy that the Jets will upset the Colts and make it to their first Super Bowl in 41 years. "I do take a lot of pride in how they are doing," Mangini told the Daily News Thursday night. "Not just in how they are playing, but the type of people they are. That locker room is loaded with good guys. I am happy with their success. I feel I contributed to it." Mangini, who won his last four games to finish 5-11 in his first season with the Browns and then was retained by new team president Mike Holmgren, took a break from hanging out with Mickey and Minnie to talk about the Jets. He revealed he has been texting back and forth with Woody Johnson, who fired him after last year's collapse. "I think they got a great shot this weekend," Mangini said. "I think New York is playing really well defensively. If they can run effectively, keep Peyton (Manning) off the field, control the clock, get turnovers, they got a great chance. They definitely have to avoid turnovers. Peyton doesn't give you a lot of chances." Mangini said his brother-in-law, a high school football coach, came up with the Beatles comparison. "He said, I'm Pete Best and Rex is like Ringo," Mangini said laughing. "I thought it was a pretty good analogy." Does Mangini wish he was still with the Beatles? "I was there in the early days," he said. "I like the band I am with now. I like my band." Mangini's rigid and paranoid style suffocated the Jets' organization, which may never have had the postseason success with him that it is having with Ryan. Even after he left the Jets, Mangini had a huge influence on their success this season. He made the draft-day trade to allow the Jets to move up to get Mark Sanchez and during the season traded them Braylon Edwards. The Jets may have dumped Mangini, but he says it made no sense to eliminate them as potential trade partners. "You can't cut off your nose to spite your face," he said. "I had no reservations at all about trading with the Jets." Mangini was fired despite having two winning seasons and one playoff appearance in his three years, but it doesn't sound as if he's holding any grudges. The irony is that he had the same 9-7 record in his final year as Ryan had this year, but the Jets snuck into the playoffs this time around. (Page 2 of 2) "I want them to be successful. I am happy for their success," Mangini said. "In having a chance to address those guys when I got let go, I told them what I said all season - I really liked the group of guys in the locker room. They are good people who work hard. I told them one of the most important things to do is embrace the new guy coming in. I didn't know it was going to be Rex. "I really like Rex a lot. His brother (Rob) is on my staff. I've gotten to know Rex. Buddy (Ryan) was in town before the second-to-last game. I'm glad the Jets are experiencing the success that I thought we could have." Of course, if Brett Favre played for the Jets down the stretch the way he's played for the Vikings this season, Mangini might have wound up in the Super Bowl. Now it could be Favre vs. the Jets in the Super Bowl. Mangini spoke to Favre before he made his decision to come out of retirement again this season after playing the end of last season with a partially torn biceps. "It was important to him to get another shot to win it all," he said. "We were on the right track last year, but it didn't work out. I am happy for him, too. The perception is he and I didn't get along. We did. It's nice to see him getting close to making his dream come true." Mangini stays in touch with friend and Jets GM Mike Tannenbaum and says he last spoke to Rex Ryan late in the season. Mangini may be gone, but so many of the players he helped bring in during his three years with Gang Green remain - 26 of the 53players on the active roster became Jets while Mangini was here. Ten of them are starters - seven on offense and three on defense. And that's not counting the two players he traded to the Jets - Sanchez and Edwards. Or Kris Jenkins and Leon Washington, both on injured reserve. The same players who collapsed with Mangini at the controls last year are flourishing under Ryan's player-friendly leadership. Mangini is not surprised they are one win from the Super Bowl. He saw what this team was capable of last year with back-to-back victories at New England and at undefeated Tennessee to get to 8-3. "There is great fight in that group," he said. "Great resilience." He's traveling back to Cleveland on Sunday and wasn't sure if he would be home in time to watch the Jets-Colts game. He's hoping it's not A Hard Day's Night for his former team. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CribbsWalker Posted January 22, 2010 Report Share Posted January 22, 2010 Definitely excited to see what Mangini can do with the Browns. Nothing would be better than having a great team that plays hard, rarely is penalized and is filled with terrific character. If he was able to pull together that Jets team, imagine what can be accomplished under the tutilage of great minds like Holmgren and Heckert. Exciting stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SJ_Browns Posted January 22, 2010 Report Share Posted January 22, 2010 Definitely excited to see what Mangini can do with the Browns. Nothing would be better than having a great team that plays hard, rarely is penalized and is filled with terrific character. If he was able to pull together that Jets team, imagine what can be accomplished under the tutilage of great minds like Holmgren and Heckert. Exciting stuff. +1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gips Posted January 22, 2010 Report Share Posted January 22, 2010 I think we are going to see the real eric mangini under holmgren and heckert ,penguini started becoming genuinely fan friendly and less paranoid and secretive as the season progressed last year ,so much in fact he reconverted me from a hater ,i never looked for a reason to dislike mangini he did a good job of that on his own and without media bias..but it turns out i missed what was going on under the hood of secret agent mangini's engine and it was mangini's "lack of openness ,honesty and just the overall bad person aura" i disliked.. Once he opened "the process" ,the locker room and started opening up more in general i realized i had judged the book by its cover and needless to say i felt like a heel...i have seen mangini smile more since holmgren came to town than i have in the 4 years he has been a coach and i believe he has found himself through this years hardships and he has certainly learned browns fans are both fanatical and forgiving we expect a certain degree of openness and fan friendly behavior from the coach not hogwash we wont eat... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
next2nothing Posted January 22, 2010 Report Share Posted January 22, 2010 Great article. Know why he is proud of that team? Because he helped build it and no Jets fan or part of the NY media will accept that. I've talked to a couple Jets fans online and they are so convinced that Rex Ryan along with their FA pickups in the off season were what catapulted this team to where they are now. They fail to mention all the talent Mangini helped bring in or that Rex Ryan would have had a worse record than Mangini's last year if not for the wins they were handed in the last two weeks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kosar_For_President Posted January 22, 2010 Report Share Posted January 22, 2010 You know what I am not a fan of is the Jets #31 ranking against the pass. Against Payton, forget about it. I guarantee a minimum 13 point win. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Earl34 Posted January 22, 2010 Report Share Posted January 22, 2010 It's entirely correct that the NY media cannot accept it. I heard an interview with the GM where they talked for 3 or 4 minutes about how HE built this team and the bottom line is that he's a lawyer who's never scouted a football player personally in his life. I found it laughable that nowhere in that 3 minutes did he or the host ever once mention Eric Mangini. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beefjerky Posted January 23, 2010 Report Share Posted January 23, 2010 You know what I am not a fan of is the Jets #31 ranking against the pass. Against Payton, forget about it. I guarantee a minimum 13 point win. They're actually #1 against the pass, you almost couldn't have been more wrong: http://www.nfl.com/stats/team?seasonId=200...G&Submit=Go They are #31 for the pass. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DACHUMS Posted January 23, 2010 Report Share Posted January 23, 2010 Eric is a class act, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Earl34 Posted January 23, 2010 Report Share Posted January 23, 2010 They're actually #1 against the pass, you almost couldn't have been more wrong: http://www.nfl.com/stats/team?seasonId=200...G&Submit=Go They are #31 for the pass. They're 31st pass offense....not defense is what you mean. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flugel Posted January 23, 2010 Report Share Posted January 23, 2010 You know what I am not a fan of is the Jets #31 ranking against the pass. Against Payton, forget about it. I guarantee a minimum 13 point win. Not saying you're wrong but it's hard to believe they rank 31st with Revis playing some of the best shutdown corner you can play out there as of late. I didn't spend alot of time watching the Jets but it seems like their secondary is what is making everythign else work out there so much more effectively. They kept Rivers in 3rd and forever, which was seemingly the hottest team in the AFC you could play as a barometer of "who'd you beat?" This time of year, you can toss all those rankings out the window. It wasn't too long ago Peyton Manning and Co gagged on a 9-7 Steelers team at home in the playoffs. As invincible as Manning always seems to be in the regular season, he does alot of things that aren't typical of Peyton in January like GET SACKED, look average and throw INTs. That's improved some over the years but it STILL isn't the Peyton you see all regular season. SAME has held true with McNabb. I say this because these guys collected more Conference MVPs without punctuating them with SB Ws. Manning has 1 SB; but if anyone wants to tell me that offense hasn't underchieved in the post seasons based on what their regular seasons projected - I'm all ears. Want to know the irony of it all? Here's Peyton post season passing numbers heading into the Superbowl the 1 time they made it since 1997: Year W | L Att Com Pct Yards Yds/Att Long Td Int QB Rating 2006 3-0 115 72 62.6 787 6.8 52 2 6 66.8 When have you ever seen Manning over a 3 game period with a ratio of 2 TDs to 6 INTs in the regular season? Those numbers above didn't include the Superbowl but I think Rex Grossman might have thrown more TD passes to the Colts than Manning had to. Believe it or not, I think Manning is the BEST regular season QB I've ever seen at the pro level; BUT I can't extend that into the conversation of the BIG Game/Post Season QBs. He never won the big game vrs Florida either for a very talented college team that stockpiled the NFL draft. I think he's got some pressure here and if he wins - that quiets the only remaining thing to criticize about his career. That's why I remind people to forget regular season stats because the NY Jets this year are doing what those Arizona Cardinals did LAST year. The year before that an undefeated team lost to a team they SHOULD have clobbered based on the regular season projections. That's why the Jets are getting 3 more hours to introduce themselves. If they LOSE, I'm sure NY media will finally discover a reason to give Mangini some credit. If they WIN? It'll be more about how much better Rex's path to 9-7 was than Mangini's rookie 10-6 record. I can't let that stop me from rooting for the underdogs. - Tom F. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kosar_For_President Posted January 23, 2010 Report Share Posted January 23, 2010 They're 31st pass offense....not defense is what you mean. Yea Earl you are right. I should of checked it, the guy on the radio on the way home must of misspoke, or I heard wrong. I really need to stop drinking and driving, jk. Thanks though. I still think Indy is going to win big time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kosar_For_President Posted January 23, 2010 Report Share Posted January 23, 2010 They're actually #1 against the pass, you almost couldn't have been more wrong: http://www.nfl.com/stats/team?seasonId=200...G&Submit=Go They are #31 for the pass. Your right Jerky, I must of heard wrong. Thanks for keeping it straight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rooster Dick Posted January 24, 2010 Report Share Posted January 24, 2010 Your right Jerky, I must of heard wrong. Thanks for keeping it straight. Even if you did hear wrong, have you been watching football at all this season? You seriously thought the Jets were bad against the pass? Awkward Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterbell Posted January 24, 2010 Author Report Share Posted January 24, 2010 Even if you did hear wrong, have you been watching football at all this season? You seriously thought the Jets were bad against the pass? Awkward I'm in the northeast so I've seen a lot of Jets games and in at least 3 games their pass defense was brutal in the last 2 minutes..It might have been a function of bad scheming and to much blitzing but those 3 losses were caused by the secondary.Lito Sheppard sucks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Earl34 Posted January 24, 2010 Report Share Posted January 24, 2010 I'm in the northeast so I've seen a lot of Jets games and in at least 3 games their pass defense was brutal in the last 2 minutes..It might have been a function of bad scheming and to much blitzing but those 3 losses were caused by the secondary.Lito Sheppard sucks I think you're right. Revis is the best and they pressure with the blitz because Revis allows that. I think that Lowery is pretty good. Kerry Rhodes and Lito Sheppard are relative liabilities in coverage. It's basically Rex Ryan blitzing the hell out of your QB and daring you to pick on whoever isn't covered by Revis. If Peyton Manning can't beat that then I doubt anyone can. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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