The Jets Fix The Offense
Many people ask me what the worst times of the year is to make comics and the answer is obviously Julyish for obvious reasons. Early April is the second worst, being nothing but repetitive draft speculation and nothing else. Third, and the worst for a different reason, is January. January is the time of the year when the most content is happening. The beginning of January (especially now with the extended season) is when the meat of this comic’s lifeblood occurs: drama. Everything is viable. Playoff drama is tight as hell, and so is bottom-feeder drama. Black Monday is a frequently overlooked time here because there’s just never any goddamn space to make fun of everything. I wish I had made fun of Nathaniel Hackett more this season but I just always kept having to push it aside. Nathaniel Hackett deserved to be mocked.
Before we get to the Jets, let’s take a quick moment to laugh at his Broncos tenure one more time. Remember when the Broncos hired him because he was friends with Aaron Rodgers and then Rodgers decided to stay put? Then the Broncos traded their future for Russell Wilson as a hail mary and that ended up making their failures this year, especially on offense, even funnier? Hackett was practically the definition of a guy who failed upward. He followed Doug Marrone from the Bills to Jacksonville, where he had his One Good Season ™ getting a great rushing game out of Leonard Fournette and then subsequently sucked and was fired. The Packers hired him to be Rodgers’ pal and pal he was. He stood around and played ping pong with Rodgers and entertained his conspiracy theories while Matt Lafleur and, you know, S-tier QB Rodgers himself had great seasons. He got scooped up by the Broncos on a ploy and became our next Adam Gase: a guy who rode the success of a hall-of-fame talent to a job he shouldn’t have had.
He was overmatched from the first game. He had to bring in a guy just to help him keep track of time and make decisions. He was awful all year and couldn’t even keep his gig for one full season. Does he belong on the worst head coaches of all time list? Probably. Not near the top like current champion Urban Meyer but maybe down in the bottom half of the top 10. Just a loser from the word go. Now Sean Payton, a genuinely good offensive mind, is the coach of Denver and we get to find out if last year was Hackett ruining Russ or if maybe Hackett deserves some less blame than he gets because Russ was broken regardless. Even if Russ truly did break and Hackett wasn’t deserving of so much blame, I have no idea what the Jets saw this season to make them go “yeah, that’s the guy who is going to fix this”.
Is it because of his success with the run game in Jacksonville? The Jets were only competitive on offense last year when Breece Hall was healthy, so that’s my line of thinking. I assume they will grab a decent veteran QB this offseason (Rodgers, Carr, or Jimmy is my guess) and lean on Hall again. Saleh was brought in to be the guy and generally considered a good hire, but he deserves to be on the hot seat next year. I can’t remember the last time the Jets had a legitimately good offense. Not passable, but good. Like, it was the better unit and top 12 or so. I have a hunch that next year will not be it.
Making the whole building a dumpster is just perfect.
ROFL, I came here to say the same exact thing.
Also, I’ll laugh my butt off if it turns out that the Jets hired Hackett legitimately hoping to lure Rodgers over, and that ploy fails, and Hackett breaks all of their QBs even worse.
That’s 100% what they did. There is no other reason to bring in a guy with Nathaniel Hackett’s track record so quickly. Such a JEST move.
Such is their love of over the hill Packers QBs.
Oh my God New York
that is all
If the plan is to draft Caleb Williams, then the Jets just hired the best person available to make that happen.
Great and classic feeling Draw Play comic! I love the alt text too!
I really wanted the jets to get better after this relative success of a year they had (aka just better than the last two combined) but now it doesn’t look like that’ll happen, especially since they plan on sticking with milf hunter for whatever reason.
“current champion Urban Meyer…”
Ok serious question (I haven’t thought about this too much yet but I am curious what other people think):
Was Urban Meyer the worst head coach in NFL history?
The one that comes to mind immediately that might challenge him is Bobby Petrino who just abruptly left the Falcons in December 2007 after assuring everyone he wouldn’t.
That said, Urban Meyer might be worse. What do you guys think?
Petrino is a surefire #2 but I think Meyer still has the crown of fools. Petrino is mainly remembered for weaseling out when his team wasn’t as good as promised but if it weren’t for that he would’ve at least stayed around the whole season. The media circus around Meyer was so bad for his entire tenure (on top of him being a genuinely bad NFL coach that was holding his team back from the 5-7 wins they probably would have gotten otherwise) that they had no choice but to fire him.
This discussion was had and I made a big argument for Urban the week he got fired:
https://www.thedrawplay.com/comic/urban-meyer-the-worst-head-coach-hire-ever/
Petrino is a close second but I still think Urbs was worse
It’s Florida so nothing will probably happen in the end, but I hope the Lambo lawsuit drags on a while. Physically assaulting players beats anything I’ve heard from Petrino.
Petrino had a better record over a the same amount of games despite losing his starting quarterback (to prison) and back-up (to a trade). He also didn’t physically assault anyone on the team.
I feel like Hackett is severely underrated as a bad head coach. He had a great defense, with young stars on rookie contracts, and an offense with plenty of WR talent waiting to be unlocked. When they got Wilson, it seemed like he was in a great position to compete. He shit the bed, but I feel like all of the attention was on Wilson and his weird “Captain America” shtick. I think Wilson is as lame as a soggy bologna sandwich, but why didn’t Hackett get more criticism for being (at least what appeared to be) a complete buffoon? Why is he now getting an OC job when he couldn’t do anything with a legitimately more-talented roster? To try to lure #12 from Wisconsin? Look at how well that ended in Denver.
There’s just something about white guys who manage to stand in the same room as an elite QB that owners drool over. The Adam Gase comparison is fully appropriate, and we should have seen that coming giving that we’re the ones who made Gase in the first place!
I much prefer the offseason content to be honest. The comics are usually funnier, and getting 3 per week instead of 2 is super nice.
I swear Hackett + Milf hunter is a recipe for 0-17. We are actively robbing Breece Hall, Sauce Gardner and Garett Wilson of fulfilling careers. I’m rooting for the meteor at this point.
I really wonder what Bieniemy is saying in these interviews that kept him from getting hired. Like he’s interviewed with half of the league and has Andy Reid’s recommendation letter and yet couldn’t even get a second interview.