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There was an interesting piece on how all of it went down . . .
on SI.com by Albert Breer about the Jets’ road to Sam Darnold.
I think with Peter King leaving Sports Illustrated, Breer is going to be the centerpiece of their NFL coverage.
“Bert” is a rising star with great sources and good football knowledge.
This story was a strong way for Breer to come out of the gate after Peter’s recent departure.
One of the truly captivating aspects of the story is all the dialogue it provides from the Jets’ war room from early in the draft, from Cleveland’s pick up to the Jets.
When Darnold was clearly falling to the Jets at three, Breer reports the Jets VP Brian Heimerdinger said to the team’s GM Mike Maccagnan, “You have a horseshoe up your ass.”
A little strong don’t you think?
How about, “You have the luck of the Irish on your side.”
I’m not sure I would say to my boss, “You must have a horseshoe up your ass.”
But you know what, I really not 100 percent sure Heimerdinger considers Maccagnan his boss. My sense is that he considers him his equal. That is just my take. Brian has a tremendous amount of power in the Jets organization – tremendous.
I can’t tell you how many times, in practice, or before games, I saw Heimerdinger standing chatting with the owner or head coach, and not Maccagnan.
And if I did say it on the spur of the moment, I wouldn’t repeat it to a sports writer.
But I digress.
This was a great article. Here is one small paragraph . . .
“Maccagnan leaned over to Heimerdinger, sitting to his left, and said,
‘We … we … he just fell to us.’ The GM then got up and walked
around to the front table in the war room, and over to Bowles and owner
Christopher Johnson, who were seated to his right, so he could whisper
to them, ‘Hey, this is not what we expected. I’m going to draft Sam
Darnold here. You guys OK with that?’”
Good stuff.
This truly was a magical moment in Jets history, and Breer did a great job of capturing it for the readers.
For months, I rarely brought up Darnold when talking or writing about the Jets, because I never thought he’d be there.
I thought Baker Mayfield was going to be a Jet.
But it worked out in the reverse fashion of what most people thought – Mayfield is a Cleveland Brown and Darnold is a Jet.
Over the next few months, I’m going to sniff around as to why the Browns soured on Darnold.
Time will tell if they were right, but something clearly happened in Cleveland. Maybe it was the turnovers – 13 picks and nine lost fumbles last year.
But I think if the Jets take it slow with Darnold, help him with months and months of ball security drills to cut down on the fumbles, and months and months of film study to help him improve his reads to cut down on picks, I think this guy will be the real deal.
One other thing about Bert Breer’s story. I’m not entirely sure how he got all that dialogue because to the best of my knowledge he wasn’t in the war room. I could be wrong, but I don’t think he was in there.
March 17, 2018
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