From Mangenius to Manjerkoff

Eric Mangini is no longer the head coach of the New York Jets, having been jettisoned on Monday after leading the team to a 9-7 record one year after they slumped to 4-12.  9-7 might seem pretty good after 4-12, until you realize that at one point this season they were 8-3 and looked poised to make a Super Bowl run.  Then lots of bad stuff started happening, mostly the fault of Brett Favre whose arm has apparently petered out after 18 seasons and countless thousands of throws.  The team limped to a 1-4 finish and missed the playoffs…and what made it really bad – like, cosmically, poetically bad – was that they lost the last game to the Miami Dolphins who are led by Chad Pennington, the QB the Jets got rid of because they preferred Favre.  I don’t know if that’s irony or not, but it is definitely damn funny.

It’s not certain who is more to blame for the Jets’ travails – Mangini, the artist formerly known as Mangenius, or GM Mike Tennenbaum, the guy who had such a hard-on for Favre that he overlooked Favre’s age and general prickiness and traded for him.  All I know for sure is that Tennenbaum is still working for the Jets and Mangini isn’t.  And Favre…well, Favre is doing his traditional off-season retirement speculation dance with the media.  I’m guessing, at this point, there wouldn’t be too many Jets fans crying if Favre decided to finally hang it up for good – and Tennenbaum probably wouldn’t be too sad either.  Actually, Tennenbaum looks like he’s already moved on from this season’s debacle – he’s found his scapegoat in Mangini and can now focus on bringing in a new coach to save the team (the way Mangini apparently saved them a couple years ago when he went 10-6 and lost in the playoffs to his old mentor Bill Belichick).  The apparent #1 candidate is Bill Cowher, the jut-chinned coach who led the gritty Pittsburgh Steelers to Super Bowl glory a couple years ago.  Unfortunately, Cowher is evidently not a huge fan of Mr. Tennenbaum’s work and is disinclined to accept the job as long as Tennenbaum is there.  And who knows what he thinks of Favre.  I’m guessing after about the 10th bad interception Cowher would start wishing he was back in the studio with Shannon Sharpe and Dan Marino and the ten other guys they have on that show every week.

The point is that, right now, it looks like the Jets will have a new quarterback as well as a new coach next year, and may very well have a new GM.  This is not what Jets fans had in mind when they took Favre off the Packers‘ hands last off-season.  Favre was supposed to be the missing piece of the puzzle, the dynamic, gunslinging signal-caller who finally took their offense out of the vanilla range where Chad Pennington operated, and the team down the path to playoff glory.  Instead, Favre seemed not to fit with the offense, which is really a running offense with Thomas Jones as the main man, and appeared not to get along with coach Mangini who insists on treating all the players equally, even if they’re certain Hall of Famers who think rose petals are supposed to be spread everywhere they walk.  Basically, Mangini refused to kowtow to Favre.  I’d like to believe this didn’t have any effect on Favre’s play, but I don’t know that it didn’t.  Sure he’s Mr. Iron Man – but he’s also an over-sensitive crybaby who tends to pout when people don’t pay him what he thinks is the proper respect.  That’s why he ended up out of Green Bay in the first place.  And now his woe-is-me act has apparently contributed to Eric Mangini being pink-slipped after he led the team to a winning record despite having to work in a new quarterback and a bunch of new offensive linemen.

And what of Mangini, the boy wonder who became the toast of New York, even earning a cameo on The Sopranos?  It’s unlikely that he’ll land another head coaching job right away – former coordinators who become coaches usually have to serve a short exile as a coordinator again before someone else will give them a shot.  Mangini, a defensive guru under Bill Belichick in New England, might wind up someplace like Detroit, where God knows they could use some help learning how to stop people.  Or maybe he’ll go to Cleveland and help them with their defense.  Or perhaps Houston where the offense is in place, but the defensive coaches have all been fired.  All I know is that, wherever Mangini goes, people will be inclined to hate his guts.  He’s just one of those guys…sort of like Bill Belichick.  Apparently, Mangini learned everything from Bill, including his people-skills.  And how did he repay this kindness?  By ratting out the Patriots to the NFL, touching off Spygate.  Clearly, Mangini is a douchebag…which makes me wonder if college wouldn’t be a good place for him.  Rich Rodriguez, Nick Saban and Bobby Petrino have all been good in college and they’re as giant as assholes can be.  Mangini could land on-campus somewhere, and mix in with the other smug, patronizing twats who don’t know as much as they think they do (they’re called professors I believe).  Maybe Notre Dame.  They love former Belichick assistants.  Or, they used to, until they found out what a fat, overrated pile of crap Charlie Weis is.