"The Showdown"

Earlier this year I was very condescending toward Rex Ryan and the Jets and their so called attempt to “buy into” the NFL playoffs. Well, it looks like Coach Ryan proved me wrong and I offer my congratulations. The upset at Indianapolis was completely unexpected and although Payton Manning played his worst game of the season the NY Jet played probably their best.

So now comes the most interesting matchup (at least for me) in the NFL playoffs and you could not have asked for two teams more diametrically opposed than these two. The Jets are, in my opinion, the last of the Lombardi-like coached teams. What I mean by that is that the Jets rely completely on the judgment of their coaches and the “fly by the seat of my pants” style of Coach Ryan to thrive. You might remember that in the HBO “hard knocks” series I gave great grief to their methodology for selecting players for the team. Based on the show (and yes Virginia, I know they couldn’t show everything even on a HBO series), most of the personnel decisions are made by sitting around a room while various coaches give their “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” on players.

Well, experience in that art (NFL personnel) only can take you so far. That’s a valuable lesson that the coach on the other sideline this weekend knows extremely well. The Patriots are probably doing more today with analytics than any other team in the NFL and they’ve been doing it as early as 2000 when they picked Tom Brady 199^th in the draft. Did they know something then that no one else did? I think so. The Patriots are the most consistent team in the NFL not only in making playoffs, winning playoff games, etc.. but also in the very, very important concept of “doing more with less”.

I, like many detectives on TV, do NOT believe in coincidences. Too many times over the last few years the Patriots have picked up players either through the draft or via trades that have greatly impacted their team. Players like Seymour, Welker, Brady (sorry for the double mention).. etc. Forbes magazine actually recently published NFL teams that are the most “EFFECTIVE” with their payrolls. No surprise, the Patriots were the most effective team in the league with the 3^rd lowest payroll.

Most of these players weren’t on ANYBODY’S radar yet they’ve become extremely valuable to what is arguably the best team in the NFL right now.

How did they find these players? I honestly don’t know the details, but I can tell you it probably wasn’t by using anything like what I saw the Jets use this year.

So here it is, the “showdown”. The last Lombardi-like team (probably in the league) vs. the team of the 21^st century run by an offensive genius, led by the 199^th pick in the draft and operating right now as smoothly as the finest Swiss timepiece (or maybe they are a Timex based on cost?).

Enjoy the weekend, if you haven’t read the “Kirwan” book mentioned in my previous post I will re-iterate how important it is. I gave several copies as Christmas gifts this year.

Watch how these two teams operate, watch how they are coached. I think you’ll see a startling difference in how they operate on the sidelines and certainly how they perform on the field.