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Woody Johnson spoke at the Super Bowl. Here is some of what he had to say along with a break down. Let’s get it started.
Johnson was asked to repond to the following quote from LaDainian Tomlinson on the Jets dysfuncational locker room.
“It is as bad as I’ve ever been around, honestly,” Tomlinson said on Showtime. “And I’ve been around some locker rooms and quarterback-receiver situations and what-not. But it was as bad as I’ve been around. You know, it was at the point where I think the players could no longer do anything about it. There was nothing that the players could do. So when it gets to that point, there are certain changes that need to happen.”
“I called him but I didn’t get him,” Johnson said. “But LaDainian’s amazing. I hold him in the highest [regard]. Everybody was frustrated at the end of the season. We won’t hold him accountable for that.”
First of all, don’t you find it strange that an NFL owner would call a player, and the player wouldn’t call him back, immediately? This is a man who paid him the last couple of years. Tomlinson made this comments shortly after the regular season ended. Johnson’s comments were last week.
Clearly, Tomlinson views his days as a Jet as over. How else can you explain him not calling Johnson back, quickly?
Secondly, Johnson saying “we won’t hold him accountable for that,” is an interesting way of reacting to Tomlinson’s statement.
Jets fans can only hope that Johnson doesn’t discount Tomlinson’s comments as just frustration, and really addresses these serious issues that plague the Jets right now.
Johnson said they will work hard to fix what is wrong with the team -“That’s our job. We’re trying to make our team better. We’re using every ounce, every nerve cell we have, 24/7 trying to improve this team.”
Since L.T. isn’t coming back, it’s hard to say he said what he said out of frustration. I think “candor” would be a better word to describe what the running backs said.
With that being said, it is important to put into context what was going on in that locker room.
LIke I’ve said before, there are a lot of good guys in that room, and if you extracted the mercurial Holmes out of there, it would be a terrific locker room. This storm centers around one man, with players angry at his attitude, and the ridiculous money he makes (considering the Jets bid against themselves, and nobody was coming close to that offer).
Johnson didn’t want to take a $7.5 million hit, so they decided to bring Holmes back this year.
But if remains to be seen if this can be fixed. When L.T. says there was nothing the players could do about the problems. That is code for Holmes is impossible to deal with.
When Rex says he didn’t know how bad things were in there, I find that hard to beleive. But once again, when somebody is impossible to deal with, it’s hard to figure out what to do. Rex had run out of answers.
Johnson also said the Super Bowl, he was going to have dinner with Sanchez.
The Jets have been accused of coddling Sanchez, and you could make the argument this falls into that category.
Unless he’s meeting with him about taking a paycut (which he absolutely should do), what else do they need to meet about?
Woody can’t help Sanchez with is pocket presense or reading defenses. I don’t mean to be flip, but this meeting serves little purpose.
And plus having dinner with Sanchez is easy. If you are going to have dinner with somebody, it’s Holmes. But like I’ve said before, everyone is scared of him.
In closing, as we reported here, Woody (and Ira Axelrad) are pissed right now, and making Florham Park a tough place to work (on the business side). That is why Thad Sheely and Matt Higgins departed.
But if Woody being pissed is channeled properly, perhaps it can be a positive, almost like a Steinbrenner-effect.
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