faba Posted February 24, 2006 Share Posted February 24, 2006 Updated: Feb. 24, 2006, 1:59 PM ET Mangini, Tannenbaum have rock-solid relationship By Michael Smith ESPN.com Archive HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. -- The old general manager's office belongs to the new general manager, the former assistant general manager. Actually, the new GM/old assistant GM is relatively young; as you might have heard, Mike Tannenbaum is 37 years old. Anyway, his new office, as of last Sunday morning, pretty much still had its old look to it, save for the row of family pictures of Tannenbaum, his wife, Michelle, and his 2-year-old daughter, Ella, arranged behind Terry Bradway's old desk, which sits at a new angle. Of course, there is the wall-sized fish tank that stands opposite where Tannenbaum sits, brought over from the old office. He says it "takes the edge off." Watching the tank's colorful inhabitants swim about, he jokes about how simple life is for them -- no worries, no agents, no media, no salary-cap problems. Before taking a seat, Tannenbaum notices a floating object and thinks he's lost another one. False alarm. New New York Jets head coach Eric Mangini, 35, the other half of the youngest GM-coach tandem in the NFL, joins Tannenbaum at the table in front of the tank, a favorite of Mangini's 2-year-old son, Jake. Father does not share his son's affection, in this case. "I don't know if I'm feelin' the fish tank, dawg," Mangini mutters to Tannenbaum, which is as loud as it gets for him most of the time. Mangini says that precisely what the imported aquatic environment needs is some edge to it; he jokingly suggests adding a few piranhas. Seriously, doing so would serve to speed up the process Tannenbaum's already started. You see he's already lost six of what was once 12 fish because he often neglects them. He's that into his work. His real babies are the Jets, for whom there's always something more to do. "He's a guy that lives this job 24-7, 365," Bradway says. Life's imagination -- amazing, isn't it? It was a mere 11 years ago that Tannenbaum and Mangini were a couple of guppies trying to survive with the old Cleveland Browns, the former a personnel assistant and the latter a coaching assistant after having served as a 23-year-old ball boy (one with a degree from Wesleyan, which has to be some kind of record for overqualification), then briefly as an intern in the public relations department, during which time head coach Bill Belichick noticed the kid's work ethic. Tannenbaum and Mangini would run into each other often in the facility's well-stocked kitchen (fortunate for a couple of cash-strapped wannabes), located near the main copy machine. "One of the biggest copiers you've ever seen," Tannenbaum says. "We called it Queen Mary." Now look at them. Two king fish charged with rebuilding the Jets in the image of the New England Patriots, one teasing the other about the fish tank in his office. "In New Orleans [as a Saints intern in 1994] I had a chair," Tannenbaum says with a chuckle. Mangini might be young, but there's no doubt he's qualified. Ditto for his GM. Jets chairman and CEO Woody Johnson has the closest thing possible to the Patriots' duo of Belichick and personnel guru Scott Pioli, short of getting the real thing. Mangini has spent 10 of his 11 seasons in the NFL working closely with Belichick, last year as his defensive coordinator, and has long worn the title of "Belichick's prot Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YJF Posted February 25, 2006 Share Posted February 25, 2006 Great article. Everyone should read it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SouthernJet Posted February 26, 2006 Share Posted February 26, 2006 man, that article gives u a feelin that maybe, just maybe we are gonna get it right this time,, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.