Palladino: It's Not Just Geno — Stupidity Runs Rampant In Jets' Organization
By Ernie Palladino
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It's never good when your quarterback is constantly apologizing to the public for personal missteps. But it's even worse when the whole organization appears to regard common sense as a disease rather than an asset.
In other words, Geno Smith isn't the only Jet who needs to prostrate himself in front of the fan base. Stupidity has been an issue throughout the hierarchy. It's just that Smith -- with his missed meeting, surly customer-relations demeanor and non-existent field smarts -- is simply the public face of Woody Johnson's traveling circus.
There is certainly enough embarrassment to go around. Yet, it is Smith who comes out of it looking the worst. He's the one coaches and administrators were counting on to pull the Jets back to respectability. Obviously, it wasn't happening.
And then came the Lions loss two weeks ago. He dropped an F-bomb on a fan and embarrassed himself and an organization whose friends have fled to the dark corners as fast as ants under a spotlight. That was bad enough, but it still might have been forgotten and forgiven if he had put up even the smallest of showings in San Diego.
Instead, the fallout from Smith's perfectly horrible on-field effort was compounded by news of his missing a meeting the night before. He blamed it on the confusion of the Pacific Time Zone. The upshot is the perception that the Jets now have a quarterback who has not only proved himself thin-skinned to well-deserved -- though perhaps awkwardly-worded -- criticism, but apparently one who lacks the mental acuity to understand that life in Southern California begins three hours earlier than life in New Jersey.
Given that a quarterback is the leader of the offense and generally the face of a team, it just doesn't look great if your struggling starter comes off as dumb as well as ineffective. Especially when attempting to explain his mistake to the media.
"Mainly, I just counted down instead of counting up and got the times mixed up," Smith reasoned. "So I guess you could say I was on West Coast time when ... I mean thinking I was on East Coast time when we were actually on West Coast time, so it was my mishap. It really had nothing to do with the time zones."
But who's on first?
For the 1-4 Jets, this is doubly bad. Their prolonged lack of success has led more than one observer to view the entire organization as, well, less than intelligent. John Idzik used all 12 of his picks in this year's draft instead of packaging one or two of them to address his empty cornerback situation. Amid that throng, only Calvin Pryor, Jace Amaro and Trevor Reilly were deemed roster-worthy.
Apparently, Smith isn't the only one in the organization lacking in judgment, personal or otherwise.
On Rex Ryan's part, he didn't penalize Smith with loss of playing time. Honest mistake, the coach said. No. It was a silly, thoughtless goof-up, and if Ryan didn't at least take some money out of Smith's pocket for it, he then enables similar behavior.
Dumb.
Only days before the worst loss in the Ryan era, Johnson proclaimed that making the playoffs was not a prerequisite for the coach's continued employment. He may have been trying to take the heat off Rex, but Johnson -- in his good-heartedness -- could not have made a more ridiculous statement. Whether current on-field events come as a result of bad breaks, physical mistakes or -- for those who refuse to believe Oswald acted alone -- a conspiracy on Idzik's part to force Ryan out in favor of his own guy, it was just not smart to say that.
If Ryan can't pull this team out of a spiral that could well continue this week with a horrible thumping against Peyton Manning and the Broncos, only a true act of stupidity on Johnson's part would keep the coach around another season.
If the owner is lucky, nobody will notice. The season could be DOA by the time the Bills come to town on Oct. 26. When decision time comes in late December, only a handful of fans will have any interest at all in the causes and effects of this team's latest lost season.
Their only consolation will come in the recognition that their quarterback isn't the only one guilty of dumb doings. There's plenty of stupid to spread around the whole organization.
He's just the guy doing all the apologizing.
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