Really and truly, we’re about to find out what it’s like when you burn it all to the ground. Forget about NFL platitudes, words like rebuild and retool. Forget about promising a new dawn or a new era. Forget about the typical NFL rebirth cycle in which a new head coach and quarterback can help silence the echoes of prior mistakes and ineptitude. This is raw, scorched earth. This is rocks and rubble; an absolute barren graveyard where good thoughts and vibes once existed. What the New York Jets are doing cannot be described as anything other than arson.
We’re about to find out what happens when you fire your head coach five weeks into the season, a game out of first place, after having lost patience following losses to the Denver Broncos (currently the No. 7 seed in the AFC playoff race) and the Minnesota Vikings (sporting a historically good defense) by one score each. We’re about to find out what happens when, after that, you absolutely kneecap the promising career of a great defensive coordinator and prospective head coach, who was thrust into utter chaos as an interim coach with little in the way of resources and a 40-year-old quarterback still trying to find his groove. We’re about to find out what happens when, after that, you fire a general manager with mere weeks remaining on his contract; the kind of guy who was warned about this place, was a good soul, a football mind and a promising personnel man who brought the franchise an Offensive and Defensive Rookie of the Year in the same draft class. Joe Douglas, who was fired Tuesday afternoon, had his hits and misses, but he did not deserve to be tossed out the door with a little more than a month remaining in the season. No one does.
