By Mike Tannenbaum on the Jets Playing Two Offensive Styles: “We have one offense. It’s the Jets offense led by Coach Sparano.”
April 23, 2012 – 8:30 am by Steven Cuce
It’s only April, but the speculation machine keeps on churning for the New York Jets now that the organization has added Tim Tebow. Last week, Jets left guard Matt Slauson said New York will be “two different teams,” depending on who’s playing quarterback at that time of the game. Slauson believes Mark Sanchez is still the Jets starting quarterback, but that doesn’t change the fact that the offense will be completely different when Tebow will come in for the ‘Wildcat’ package.Mike Tannenbaum has been preparing for the draft, which kicks off in New York City on Thursday night. The Jets GM did his best in keeping his offensive strategy close to the vest, but also dismissed the idea that his team would be running two different offenses due to the acquisition of Tebow.Mike Tannenbaum joined ESPN New York with The Michael Kay Show (Stephen A.Smith and Don La Greca) to discuss the New York Jets primary need in the NFL draft this week, being comfortable with the Jets wide receiving core, the current status of Darrelle Revis’s contract, Matt Slauson saying the Jets will have two different offenses with Tim Tebow, and having faith in Mark Sanchez.I understand your philosophy of drafting the best player on the board, but what is the Jets primary need to fill in the draft?“There is a number of positions with the one’s I just named. The important thing to remember too is we will continue to add players throughout the off-season. The draft is very noteworthy and there is a lot of attention to it, but we’ve shown a history of adding players throughout the off-season and I would expect we will make some additional roster changes as we head into training camp and even towards the end of camp, so again be it receiver, secondary, offensive line, defensive line. We may take a few players in the draft we don’t expect and we may have to address a few things in May, so we’ll see how the cards unfold.”Are you comfortable with this wide receiving core?“Yes. I think there is a reasonable likelihood we will add another receiver at some point. We like the group. We like Santonio Holmes obviously as our number one guy. We think Jeremy Kerley is a really young and dynamic player in the slot and a pretty good punt returner. We are really excited about his future. We have a few guys in Patrick Turner that are big, physical guys. We like the nucleus that we have there and if we can add somebody else and we think the price is reasonable that is something we will look between now and camp.”You have the contract situation with Darrelle Revis right now. Where does it stand? Will it be a problem when we enter training camp?“Darrelle is under contract. He’s a really important part of our team. We are looking forward to him being here for 2012 and hopefully we can accomplish a lot together. [Stephen A. Smith: You don’t have a problem with him complaining about money after what happened two years ago and the money he’s made now? You don’t have a problem with that?] Stephen, look that is all I am going to say about that.”Matt Slauson said the Jets are going to have two different offenses now with the addition of Tim Tebow. Is that a direction you see this offense going?“First of all we have one offense. It’s our offense. It’s the Jets offense lead by Coach Sparano. Mark [Sanchez] is the starter. Tim is going to help us out and we are excited about that. How much and when? Those will all be dictated by Coach Sparano and Rex. We are really excited to have Tim. We really think he can help us and again we made that decision based on something that Rex said going back three years now, which is he really felt the ‘Wildcat’ was very difficult to defend as a defensive play caller. We were fortunate enough to have Brad [Smith]. That was the good news. Unfortunately he was a player we couldn’t keep in our salary cap system, so he moved on. We lost something when Brad moved on and we were able to get Tim we thought it was a great opportunity for us. With that being said we like the trajectory of Mark’s career. He’s done a lot of good things for us. I think he will continue to improve, so we just feel like adding Tim gives us an additional weapon to have.”How do you explain bringing Tim Tebow here in the first place after swearing your love and faith in Mark Sanchez?“I appreciate the question and here’s how we see it. We just signed Mark to an extension. He’s our quarterback. He has been our quarterback and we feel really fortunate to have him. For what we acquired Tim for and again we felt like the price was reasonable and for the role we see him in we thought it was a really good football decision. It’s going to be up to us to make it work. We didn’t make this decision of action. We know that Tim has a unique following. We did not ignore that. We think we have the infrastructure to manage it and we are excited to have him. He’s going to be additional weapon for us. We think as our backup quarterback he could do a lot of things for us on the field and it’s one thing for us to talk about in April as we get ready, but I think as it plays out during the season you’ll see what we had in mind and again we don’t want to tip our hand completely to our opponents here, so over the 16 game season I think you will see that Mark is our guy and having Tim here makes a lot of sense.” Listen to Mike Tannenbaum on 1050 ESPN New York hereTags: Darrelle Revis, Don La Greca, Mark Sanchez, Matt Slauson, Mike Tannenbaum, New York Jets, NFL, Santonio Holmes, Stephen A. Smith, The Michael Kay Show, Tim Tebow
1 Trackback(s)
Apr 23, 2012: Mike Tannenbaum on the Jets Playing Two Offensive Styles: “We have one offense … | All Tim Tebow News
Post a Comment
Name (required)
E-mail (will not be published) (required)
Website
Comments