Mike Westhoff: Jets downfall started with Mark Sanchez contract

[Thai Jet]

9 hours ago, Jetsfan80 said:

A lot of quality Special Teams coaches have the mindset for that job.  They get sh*t on way too much.  ST coaches are thinking "big picture" and have a CEO mindset more often than people think.

You just made Greek " I love Joe Judge" Jet very happy. 

[#27TheDominator]

7 hours ago, SAR I said:

Yeah, we would have lost 4 playoff games instead of winning them.  Stafford is the least clutch quarterback in the NFL. 

SAR I

We would have made the playoffs for four years instead of two?  Sign me up!

[munchmemory]

"Sanchez had completed 55.3 percent of his passes for 55 touchdowns and 51 interceptions."

And we extended his contract.  As with Darnold, plenty of people here were still defending Sanchez as most of us saw (again as with Darnold now) a terrible QB.   No matter the GM or HC, this team truly has no skill in evaluating QBs.

 

[UntouchableCrew]

Extending Sanchez to assuage his feelings after flirting with Peyton was definitely a mistake, but far from the beginning of the downfall.

The real mistake was that our drafts started to fall apart once Rex became HC and every GM we've had since has been abysmal.

[SAR I]

1 hour ago, TuscanyTile2 said:

The fact that you still love the Sanchize is reassuring to me, considering that you've given up on Darnold.  

Watching Darnold bust is continuing proof that not investing in Sanchez is the single biggest mistake of the past decade, may go down as the biggest Jets blunder alongside letting Belichick walk.

All you "Mark sucks we can do better fly planes make signs print t-shirts" SOJF's brought us nothing but Tim Tebow, Geno Smith, Greg McElroy, Michael Vick, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Bryce Petty, Christian Hackenberg, and Josh McCown.  Good job, "experts".

SAR I

[predator_05]

Sanchez says he struggled to handle the pressure in New York:

https://nypost.com/2019/12/05/listen-to-episode-14-of-gangs-all-here-playoff-memories-feat-mark-sanchez/

 

People don't really appreciate how difficult it is to play QB here.

Moreso now than ever before, the overreaction and opinionated nonsense in the media makes it even harder. How do you block it out? 

A little bit of early success will make it even harder, the expectations become higher and you're criticized for not living up to that 'standard'. 

[section314]

3 minutes ago, SAR I said:

Watching Darnold bust is continuing proof that not investing in Sanchez is the single biggest mistake of the past decade, may go down as the biggest Jets blunder alongside letting Belichick walk.

All you "Mark sucks we can do better fly planes make signs print t-shirts" SOJF's brought us nothing but Tim Tebow, Geno Smith, Greg McElroy, Michael Vick, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Bryce Petty, Christian Hackenberg, and Josh McCown.  Good job, "experts".

SAR I

If he went on to light it up somewhere else after he left here, you would have an argument.

[TuscanyTile2]

10 minutes ago, SAR I said:

Watching Darnold bust is continuing proof that not investing in Sanchez is the single biggest mistake of the past decade, may go down as the biggest Jets blunder alongside letting Belichick walk.

All you "Mark sucks we can do better fly planes make signs print t-shirts" SOJF's brought us nothing but Tim Tebow, Geno Smith, Greg McElroy, Michael Vick, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Bryce Petty, Christian Hackenberg, and Josh McCown.  Good job, "experts".

SAR I

Is that why Sanchez was so terrific post-Jets?  Hey, early in his career I was very hopeful that he'd be good too but reality has to set in at some point.

 

[TuscanyTile2]

13 minutes ago, SAR I said:

Watching Darnold bust is continuing proof that not investing in Sanchez is the single biggest mistake of the past decade, may go down as the biggest Jets blunder alongside letting Belichick walk.

All you "Mark sucks we can do better fly planes make signs print t-shirts" SOJF's brought us nothing but Tim Tebow, Geno Smith, Greg McElroy, Michael Vick, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Bryce Petty, Christian Hackenberg, and Josh McCown.  Good job, "experts".

SAR I

You equate Sanchez and Belichick?

Some of your finest trolling!

 

[fltflo]

Westy
Would fire 3/4’s of this teams asses right on the field starting with the head coach !!!
Would have made a great HC and taken no prisoners.


Sent from my iPhone using JetNation.com mobile app

[munchmemory]

6 minutes ago, fltflo said:

Westy
Would fire 3/4’s of this teams asses right on the field starting with the head coach !!!
Would have made a great HC and taken no prisoners.


Sent from my iPhone using JetNation.com mobile app

Hated that he never got a fair shot.  At a minimum, he would have commanded respect as well as team discipline.  Plus, he has incredible football knowledge beyond special teams.  No doubt would have been a better alternative to Bowles and Gase.  

[ZachEY]

Kind of torn here... He's of course correct that that contract was an absolute disaster, but I'm struggling to see what it has to do with the fact that we traded 4 picks for Sam Darnold and passed over a future hall of fame QB and a Pro-Bowl QB for Jamal Adams.

[Paradis]

Let's be honest - It went sideways when we selected Mark Sanchez over Brandon Pettigrew.

[TheClashFan]

After thinking some more about this, maybe the retirement of Damien Woody was the very beginning of the Jets slide?  The Jets decided the replace him with Wayne Hunter, who turned out to be unbelievably bad at pass protection -- more of a bullfighter than a RT.  

From that point on, the Jets decided to go "on the cheap" with the OL, a trend that did not stop until JD drafted Becton.

[peebag]

3 minutes ago, Paradis said:

Let's be fcking honest - It went sideways when selected Mark Sanchez over Brandon Pettigrew. Had they listened to me - we would have a lombardi

If only we had Paxton.....?

[Paradis]

19 minutes ago, peebag said:

If only we had Paxton.....?

love you too.

[SAR I]

2 hours ago, section314 said:

If he went on to light it up somewhere else after he left here, you would have an argument.

He injured his throwing shoulder, not to mention the irreparable damage to his psyche, betrayed and scapegoated by the man who had his tattoo on his arm.

Sanchez embraced and nurtured in New York was the path to a possible franchise quarterback, not elsewhere, not injured.

SAR I

[SAR I]

2 hours ago, TuscanyTile2 said:

Is that why Sanchez was so terrific post-Jets?  Hey, early in his career I was very hopeful that he'd be good too but reality has to set in at some point.

 

He needed help here as a starter with a proper offensive coordinator and a proper set of wide receivers.

Some birds were meant to be caged.

SAR I

[southparkcpa]

12 hours ago, slimjasi said:

Stafford on either the 2009 or 2010 team probably means home field throughout the playoffs at least one of those years 

I always think what if Favre was not let out.  Imagine Favre on that 2009 team. 

[SAR I]

56 minutes ago, TheClashFan said:

After thinking some more about this, maybe the retirement of Damien Woody was the very beginning of the Jets slide? 

The Jets slide began when the Jets defense didn't get off the bus in Pittsburgh in 2010.  The death blow was when Woody Johnson chose to believe in Rex Ryan, a fan favorite, over Brian Schottenheimer and Mike Tannenbaum, far more talented football men.

That decision led to Idzik and Sporano which led to Geno Smith and you can call it a day right there.  Geno's jaw led to the Fitzpatrick Mirage which led to a distraction from finding our QB when Mahomes was sitting there and keeping Bowles and Maccagnan too long.

Rex Ryan is the Devil.

SAR I

[slimjasi]

1 hour ago, southparkcpa said:

I always think what if Favre was not let out.  Imagine Favre on that 2009 team. 

Yep, agreed. 

[Jetsfan80]

5 hours ago, predator_05 said:

Sanchez says he struggled to handle the pressure in New York:

https://nypost.com/2019/12/05/listen-to-episode-14-of-gangs-all-here-playoff-memories-feat-mark-sanchez/

 

People don't really appreciate how difficult it is to play QB here.

Moreso now than ever before, the overreaction and opinionated nonsense in the media makes it even harder. How do you block it out? 

A little bit of early success will make it even harder, the expectations become higher and you're criticized for not living up to that 'standard'. 

Sanchez wasn't successful early, though.  He sucked.  The team was great.  

Then he fell flat on his face at his 4 other stops after New York.  If NYC was truly the problem, he'd have had some success elsewhere.  

[CotcheryifyouCan]

westhoff for HC 2021

[#27TheDominator]

Westhoff would probably have made a terrible head coach.  His problems are the same as Rex Ryan's.  He's a blowhard and not much of a people person.  He is excellent at what he does, but he does not seem like the type of guy that works well with others.  I can remember numerous times where he complained about personnel.  Would he be undermining the GM?  I think he was the source of a few of those anonymous quotes throughout the years.  You can be a pig headed lunatic and succeed, look at Belichick, but the odds are that it would wear thin in short order, as with Rex.  

[Waka Flocka Flacco]

Just now, #27TheDominator said:

Westhoff would probably have made a terrible head coach.  His problems are the same as Rex Ryan's.  He's a blowhard and not much of a people person.  He is excellent at what he does, but he does not seem like the type of guy that works well with others.  I can remember numerous times where he complained about personnel.  Would he be undermining the GM?  I think he was the source of a few of those anonymous quotes throughout the years.  You can be a pig headed lunatic and succeed, look at Belichick, but the odds are that it would wear thin in short order, as with Rex.  

I don't know why getting along with people is not generally considered to be a critical skill for this job. Your supervisors know less than you do and your reports make more than you do. Whatever Mangini and Ryan and Gase had to recommend them to the position, and to inspire truthers to this day, it doesn't help with that. Herman Edwards the dunce has a top 20 recruiting class and Todd Bowles the statue has the best defense in the NFL. And we're sitting here resigned to the Jets screwing up at losing being a matter of when and not if.

[Saul Goodman]

Bitter, blowhard jackass, just like Rex.

That’s not to say that Sanchez was a good QB, just that it’s an utterly absurd notion to say that a single contract from a decade ago is THE reason why we are where are.

Oh, and Timmy Tebow was wronged by the Jets lol.

Dude needs to take a nap. 

[NYJ1]

21 hours ago, BROOKLYN JET said:

By Greg Joyce

November 3, 2020 | 11:49am

The Jets went to the AFC championship in back-to-back years with Mark Sanchez at quarterback, but his play didn’t exactly leave a lasting impression on all of his coaches.

Or perhaps it did — just in the wrong way, at least for one coach.

“I’m sitting where I live, I live right on a golf course in Florida and there’s a lake right behind my house. I’m sitting here looking at it,” former Jets special teams coach Mike Westhoff said on The Post’s “Gang’s All Here” podcast.

“If Mark stood by my swimming pool, he couldn’t throw the ball in the damn lake.”

Westhoff was with the Jets from 2001-2012, during which he saw the likes of Vinny Testaverde, Chad Pennington, Brooks Bollinger and Brett Favre under center. The Jets then drafted Sanchez fifth-overall in 2009 and he became the starter for the team that fell a win short of the Super Bowl in 2009 and 2010.

But Westhoff said the three-year, $40.5 million extension Sanchez signed in 2012 was a price too steep to pay for a quarterback that wasn’t the main reason why the Jets were successful. Before the extension, Sanchez had completed 55.3 percent of his passes for 55 touchdowns and 51 interceptions.

“Because we started this big contract, all of a sudden I’m going to lose guys and now I’m really upset,” Westhoff said. “[Then-general manager] Mike Tannenbaum came by my office one day, I said, ‘Mike, why would you give Mark Sanchez this big new contract?’ He said, ‘Well that’s what a championship-game quarterback is paid.’ I said, ‘Well if he had anything to do with us getting there, I probably would agree with you. But for crying out loud, he had nothing to do with us getting there.’

“We led the league in rushing, we were really good on defense, I had a freaking All-Star team [on special teams] and we had an offensive line that was tough as nails.”

Shortly after Sanchez signed the extension, the Jets also traded for Tim Tebow, but Westoff said they never gave him a fair shot to be used in the right way — which Westhoff believed was in the Wildcat formation.

Mike Westhoff Anthony J. Causi

“Tony [Sparano] didn’t want to do it as an offensive coordinator,” Westhoff said. “Next thing you know, Tim had kind of bulked himself up. He got heavier. He can’t throw anyway, we all know that, so quit trying to make him a throwing quarterback, it’s not going to happen. It just didn’t happen. But he could run the football. As a Wildcat guy, I thought there’d be a place for him. It didn’t materialize.

“If we had him in that role that he was really prepared for — I think that was really a misnomer on our part. We never even did give him a chance at all. … He kept his end of the bargain. I don’t think the New York Jets kept their end.”

As for the current state of the 0-8 Jets, Westhoff said sweeping changes are needed to turn the franchise around.

“I’ll be a little bit harsh, I’d bring the exterminator into that building and I’m going to clean that place up,” he said. “I’m talking about people that don’t think they’re gone, they’re gone, because I just think it’s a mess. Really, I was so proud of my time in New York. … It was a tremendous time. Now, I see it’s like a joke, and it’s been a joke since I left.

“I would make an absolutely dramatic move and make changes all over that place and start from scratch.”

https://nypost.com/2020/11/03/mike-westhoff-jets-downfall-started-with-mark-sanchez-contract/

I love it when Mr. Westhoff tells the truth. If the Jets hire a new HC? PLEASE hire Westy!!!!!!!

[sirlancemehlot]

7 hours ago, fltflo said:

Westy
Would fire 3/4’s of this teams asses right on the field starting with the head coach !!!
Would have made a great HC and taken no prisoners.


Sent from my iPhone using JetNation.com mobile app

[NYJ1]

21 hours ago, Mo Lew said:

I would hire him back in a second. 

As HEAD COACH

[NYJ1]

8 hours ago, UntouchableCrew said:

Extending Sanchez to assuage his feelings after flirting with Peyton was definitely a mistake, but far from the beginning of the downfall.

The real mistake was that our drafts started to fall apart once Rex became HC and every GM we've had since has been abysmal.

But we still had the players on the team to win it all. Yes, the drafting most certainly started the topple, but that Jets team with even a competent QB goes to the SB.

[NYJ1]

6 hours ago, southparkcpa said:

I always think what if Favre was not let out.  Imagine Favre on that 2009 team. 

He was awesome on the 2008 team until he injured his shoulder

[SAM SAM HE'S OUR MAN]

[Beerfish]

7 hours ago, Paradis said:

Let's be honest - It went sideways when we selected Mark Sanchez over Brandon Pettigrew.

Brett Ratliff was part of the trade up package to get Sanchez........just sayin.

[Irktusk1957]

Every Mike Westhoff interview in the past 5 years...

Reporter: So Mike, what's your take on the state of the New York Jets?

Westhoff: GET OFF MY LAWN!!

[Philc1]

The downfall started when Woody started thinking he could play amateur NFL GM