During the 2011 regular season, a former Jets quarterback repeatedly criticized the current edition of the team. Now, another former Jets quarterback has joined Joe Namath with a harsh assessment of the franchise.
“I think that Rex Ryan’s ways have come back to haunt him,” Esiason told WEEI in Boston, via ESPNNewYork.com. “And Mike Tannenbaum . . . has a lot of responsibility in this regard, because they have put a lot of bad guys together in this locker room. There’s a good core of players for the New York Jets. But unfortunately, all it takes is one guy. And Rex Ryan giving Santonio Holmes the captain’s ‘C’ on the chest was an absolute embarrassment. It’s a slap in the face of all the good guys in that locker room.”
Esiason also took aim at quarterback Mark Sanchez, a player whom Namath recently has supported.
“If you watched Mark Sanchez the last month of the season, he was like a chihuahua standing on Madison Avenue and 36th Street entering the Midtown Tunnel, eyes bigger than you-know-what, and just so shaky,” Esiason said.
In the event the P.C. police had an issue with Esiason’s reference to a breed of dog that bears a Mexican name, given that Sanchez is Mexican-American, Rich Cimini of ESPNNewYork.com has cleared things up by contacting Esiason for a clarification.
Seriously.
“I chose a small dog that always looks shaken and has big eyes, and doesn’t like big things -- a chihuahua,” Esiason said. “It’s a skittish dog and he’s been a skittish player.”
Esiason also agrees that, despite what the Jets say publicly, they’re privately considering their options for upgrading the position. And they’ll be interested in Peyton Manning, if he’s available.
“If Peyton is able to play and the new General Manager [in Indianapolis] and whoever they hire to run that team out there decides to go without Peyton Manning, then I’m sure that the Jets will be sniffing around,” Esiason said. “Because that’s what the Jets do. They’re trying to find their Tom Brady. They’re trying to find their Aaron Rodgers. And I don’t think, in their mind, they think that they feel like they’ve found the kid.”
Esiason is right. And the sooner the Jets acknowledge publicly what they’re realizing privately, the closer they’ll be toward become the team they so badly want to be.