Inside Blitz: The Jets Should Offer to Make Jim Harbaugh the Highest-Paid Coach in the NFL
By Jason McIntyre
One of the more interesting general manager situations in the NFL right now is John Idzik’s predicament with the New York Jets. Hired two years ago from Seattle’s front office where he was the numbers guy, Idzik has had a woeful two years with the franchise, struggling in free agency and in the draft. The easy option: owner Woody Johnson could just fire Idzik along with coach Rex Ryan and start anew.
Here’s the popular (only?) Idzik defense: He had to come in and clean up the mess Mike Tannenbaum left, purging the balance sheet of bad contracts, and he’s largely done that without absorbing any toxic assets. And he’s only had two years! It’s very difficult to turn around a 6-10 team with the snap of a finger, especially when you don’t have a QB, though he drafted one in the 2nd round in 2013 who has been a disaster (Geno Smith).
And what kind of message does it send to prospective candidates that you’re willing to fire someone after two years?
So you can understand if long-suffering Jets fans want to cut the cord on Idzik before he botches the coach and QB search this offseason, mistakes which could set back the franchise another few years.
Woody Johnson’s move should be this: Call John Idzik into his office before Thanksgiving week and get an idea of who he’d want to be his head coach. (Why Thanksgiving? Because Atlanta could have a coaching opening, as well as the Giants and Chicago Bears. The common thread: All have starting QBs, whether or not you like Matt Ryan, Eli Manning and Jay Cutler.)
The name at the top of Idzik’s name had better be Jim Harbaugh.
All Harbaugh has done is won at San Diego (29-6), won at Stanford (29-21) and inherit a 6-10 49ers team that hadn’t been over .500 in eight years, and brought them to three straight NFC Championship games.
Woody Johnson likes stars. Pry open the checkbook and offer to make Harbaugh the highest-paid coach in the NFL and see if he’ll turn it down. Harbaugh has no connection to the Jets or the East Coast (save Miami, which is owned by Michigan Man Stephen Ross), but sell him on the Top 5 pick, playmaker Percy Harvin, an impressive defensive line and the opportunity to be the savior of a franchise that hasn’t won a Super Bowl since 1968.
Harbaugh’s issues in San Francisco are well-chronicled, and when the calendar turns to December, he’ll be the most talked-about coach in football. He won’t be brought back as a lame duck coach for his final year with the 49ers, so the franchise will either offer him an extension – he wants to be the highest paid coach in the NFL, if the rumors are to believed, but the team is balking at that without a Super Bowl win – or he’ll walk.
Lawrence, Kansas is close to where his wife is from, and the Jayhawks need a coach. Harbaugh will listen.
Ann Arbor, Michigan is where he went to college, and Brady Hoke will be fired (even if he beats Ohio State). Harbaugh will listen (again).
The Oakland Raiders will be in the market for a coach, and perhaps he and his wife prefer to stay on the West Coast.
Could a blank check lure him to New York?
LOCK OF THE WEEK
A mediocre 3-2 week, though it should have been 4-1 because Louisville was covering against FSU for 57 minutes. Painful. Season record: 12-12. This is an enormous Saturday full of impactful games, and it’s most fun to pick those, so here goes:
LSU +6 vs. Alabama. The Tide haven’t really been tested lately, especially given how bad Texas A&M has looked. Alabama is the No. 2 rush defense in the country. All LSU can do is run the ball. I’ll roll with Les Miles, but I’m not confident: I can easily see LSU doing nothing offensively and losing 31-6.
Michigan State -3.5 vs. Ohio State. The pick here should be OSU getting the hook, but how healthy is QB JT Barrett? The Spartans, who I once thought were playoff-bound, have only beaten Nebraska and didn’t look impressive doing so. The defense isn’t nearly what it was last year. Feels like 28-24 somebody.
Utah +9.5 vs. Oregon. On a loaded day, is this your big upset? After beating rival Stanford, could the Ducks suffer a letdown on the road? Utah, which seems to play up or down to the competition, has wins over UCLA and USC, and lost in OT to Arizona State. A top 30 run defense, Utah will chew clock with underrated workhorse Devontae Booker (3rd in the country in rush yards per game at 150) and I’ll be stunned if this isn’t a 1-score game with five minutes left.
Notre Dame +2.5 at Arizona State. All signs point to the Sun Devils. The Irish lost senior LB Joe Schmidt – who leads the team in tackles – for the season. He’ll be replaced with a true freshman, 5-star recruit and all-name first teamer Greer Martini (or freshman Nyles Morgan). Notre Dame is coming off defending Navy’s triple option. Ask Ohio State about that (lost the week after playing Navy at home to lowly Virginia Tech). So give me Everett Golson, 37-34.
Kansas State +6 at TCU. Bill Snyder. That’s all I’ve got. Also: If Kansas State can win outright (every other Power 5 conference is rooting for the Wildcats), the Big 12 probably gets shut out of the playoff. The reason: The Wildcats would still have to visit West Virginia and Baylor, and winning both on the road, in addition to this one, seems highly unlikely.
Redskins coach Jay Gruden excoriated ESPN reporter Britt McHenry over the weekend for “amateur” reporting about RGIII and the team’s locker room.
"“It was totally not true. And for anybody who reads that to believe that, they’re an amateur. Anybody who reports that’s an amateur. It’s totally false … That’s some small-time reporter reporting fiction.”"
People cared about this for a few minutes on twitter Sunday – a fun distraction from Washington’s sad ending in Minnesota – and the story had a few legs in DC Monday, but put me down for “not a thing.”
Here’s why: McHenry got the job at ESPN through her friend and fellow Northwestern journalism school graduate, Mike Wilbon. She’s admitted as much. [UPDATE: McHenry says she has NOT said that.] Wilbon backed McHenry Sunday after the Redskins strongly denied her report. The elephant in the room: McHenry’s looks, which are obvious to anyone with a pulse. Being extremely attractive kind of helps if you’re in the TV business. Prior to landing at ESPN, you could ask anyone who covered the team if she had broken a story or reported anything of significance, and they’d tell you no.
Coaches slam reports all the time, and the story goes nowhere; can anyone remember digs so hard like “amateur” and “small-time reporter reporting fiction” at a male reporter? Oh, wait, it happened a few months ago … to another ESPN female reporter. I mean, really, Richmond Times-Dispatch?
And that’s why this was, very briefly, a thing Sunday/Monday. The DC media aren’t fans of her work, or that she got hired by ESPN with little beat experience, and they loved it that she was publicly slammed by the Redskins.
ODDS & ENDS
My gosh, this ESPN-has-SEC-bias stuff is beyond absurd. It’s the BEST CONFERENCE IN AMERICA, do you think ESPN should focus on the crappy Big 10 or the putrid ACC? Thank you for this, Kevin Scarbinsky … I know he’s been this way for 20+ years, but does anyone else simply ‘get angry’ while reading Phil Mushnick? His anger jumps off the page and into your veins … I won’t venture a guess as to why CBS pregame ratings are up this season, but is the NFL Network seeing a pregame bump from the CBS partnership? … speaking of those Thursday NFL Network games, the CBS games are done, so Browns/Bengals is cable-only tomorrow. Also: the Thursday games, no matter how much coaches complain, are here to $tay … to the surprise of nobody, an NBA regular season game featuring LeBron on a Friday night was watched by a lot of people.