1: If Delhomme struggles, Seneca Wallace will replace him. Rumors of his non-existance are greatly overstated. Look at his stats.
2: While Cleveland WR's underperformed last season, Massequoi emerged late in his R O O K I E season. Had he started his R O O K I E FIRST season playing as well as he did during the last 4-6 games, he might have caught 60 or more passes.
3: Stop it with this "vedderrrunnn wide reciever" crap! Linemen, defensive backs, and (sorta) linebackers need veterans to learn stuff from. Running backs and wide recievers do NOT! Their jobs are pretty cut and dried. Some of it is complex, but coaches handle that.
Not that a vet who is GOOD would be bad...it's just that there's little he could teach anybody else.
4: People's personal preconceptions and biases re Mangini are interfering with their superficial declarations about his short leash in the Holmgren front office.
The Jets didn't fall apart late in his third year. Brett Favre's arm did, and Favre kept playing when he sucked because of it. I do NOT believe that he ever made Mangini aware of it, because what I've sewen of Mangini says that he would NOT allow a guy with a bumb arm sabotage his playoff hopes.
In point of fact, the preponderance of the evidence suggests that Mangini wasn't in favor of getting Favre in the first place, but accepted it after the GM dropped him on his team. Pennington was doing a great job.
Mangini built over 85% of the team with which Rob Ryan's brother went to the playoffs.
Holmgren is a West Coast guy. Mangini's excitement about his opportunity to broaden his horizons and cooperate are genuine, and Holmgren's respect for what the team did in the last half of his first season is genuine. The fact is, a LOT of players, coaches, and GM's pretty much agree that Mangini is as intelligent as anybody in the NFL.
Dumb people need labels and convenient boxes to stick people in, and Mangini's label says disciplinarian, no people skills, inflexible, egotist.
But for one thing, people chance and evolve. The smartest people are smart enough to understand that they must learn and adapt throughout their lives. Like any real player, Mangini wants to be the best, and views working with an other-than-Belichick coach with an impressive history of his own as a great opportunity.
Delhomme was a Heckert/Holmgren move, and if he falls on his face, there's no way Holmgren will use this as a pretext to fire Mangini. If the TEAM underperforms...ok. Daboll is indeed probably on the spot, but in reality there wasn't much wrong with his offense, or even his play-calling. I can sit in a bar and hit over 50% predicting run or pass with any team!
AND Daboll WANTS to use more West Coast--and Mangini agrees! Why not, since you don't have the personnel for a spread vertical game anyway DUH?
No insideously diabolical conspiracy here: Holmgren knows Mangini is a brain and hopes he wins. I also think that since Mangini is NOT an egomanic control-freak and welcomes Holmgren's guidance, Mikey will like him just fine.
5: Hardesty is not here to be featured. He will share time. This offense will feature a lot of two-back, and otherwise use a commitee.
6: A two-back team often has five backs active, with two fullbacks. Please learn to count.
7: I get the distinct impression that Rob isn't going to run a cover two. TJ Ward is prominantly a strong safety. People shouldn't compare him to Eric Turner, who was a free safety with great speed and coverage skills.
In point-of-fact, Elam is an average two-deep safety or strong safety, but is no free safety. If it's a 2-deep, this is Ward/Elam, vulnerable deep, and ZERO depth. If it's one-deep, then it's Ward strong and ADAMS OR BROWN free, with excellent depth.
Adams gets no respect, but in the season prior to his arrival here, he had something like seven picks and a ton of tackles as a free safety. He's a Felix Wright-type.
But then, what Mangini said is true. You can label guys "safety" or "cornerback", but if you're smart you simply use them however they best match up vs. a given opponent. The only thing that's highly probable is that Wright and Haden will start at corner (at least eventually this season).
So much to correct, so little time...
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