Jets gotta win or it's time to deep-six Eric
December 23
New York Post columnist Steve Serby
"AT the end, the critical end, it turns out the Brett Favre they thought they were getting was not the one they had flying the jet. At 8-3, he was still the Hall of Fame icon. Once the calendar turned to December, he was just another 39-year-old quarterback.
In these kinds of crises, it is up to the head coach to grab control of the controls and overcome the turbulence. Instead, Eric Mangini is bracing for a crash.
Judgment Day is Sunday.
It comes Sunday with none other than the exiled Chad Pennington in the house. Mangini won't like what he hears out of the stands. If he can't make a stand and beat Pennington in a game that is very much his personal Super Bowl and very much Pennington's as well, he has to go. If his Jets show up the way Tom Coughlin's Giants did against the Panthers, he can stay, whether he makes the playoffs or not.
Giant ownership was rewarded for sticking with Coughlin at a time when fans and media around here would have paid whatever the cost for a stretch limo to take him as far away as possible from East Rutherford at the end of the 2006 season. Of course, disgusted Jet fans will argue that Met ownership was not rewarded for sticking with Willie Randolph after seven games up with 17 to play.
The damning evidence against Favre: At the end, the critical end, Matt Cassel is a better quarterback than he is.
And so is Pennington.
The damning evidence against Mangini: Bill Belichick helped make Cassel better week by week, built his confidence with carefully scripted game plans week by week, and rallied his team around Cassel. Sometimes Mangini and offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer were on the same page with their quarterback, and sometimes they weren't. But as Favre got worse, the team around him got worse.
So Mangini stands guilty in the court of public opinion . . . for crimes against Jet Nation.
The prosecution's case against Eric Mangini:
Orchestrating a cruel tease that had Jet Nation dreaming of a Subway Super Bowl.
Presiding over the kind of shameful collapse that makes long-suffering Jet fans almost wish they were Cub fans. "
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