My curse

Earlier this year, as I watched the formerly respectable and currently despicable Herman Edwards flee to the Midwest, it occurred to me that my beloved New York Jets were about to enter into yet another five-year plan or "rebuilding phase."

I've watched coach after coach come through the Meadowlands (I will not call it Giants Stadium), each with their own plan to "rebuild" the Jets franchise - to return it to those glory days of Joe Namath. Most teams win a Super Bowl and get a five year grace period before they're expected to compete for a title again. Jets fans are going on 38 years.

So here we are again, for the umpteenth time in the last 10 years, rebuilding the offense and defense and not to mention the public image of the Jets - which has been more of the Giants redheaded stepchild than little brother.

Sorry if I sound skeptical or sarcastic, but I've watched eight coaches in ten years preach how they were going to change the culture of this downtrodden franchise.

Outside of Bill Parcells and Edwards, none of those coaches had playoff success, and Edwards did it with Parcells' players.

Now Jets fans are stuck with Eric Mangini, the youngest coach in the league and a former 25 year-old ball boy for the Cleveland Browns, to resurrect a franchise that's been in and out of a coma for over a decade.

Granted, age is just a number. Wonder kid Jon Gruden was named head coach of the Oakland Raiders at the tender age of 33 and led them to several division titles. But Gruden was a hotshot offensive coordinator from Philadelphia, who was billed as the next "it" coach.

Excuse me, but I never once saw Mangini being billed as the next big thing in the coaching world. Two years ago, he was a little-known defensive backs coach in New England.

Yet here Mangini is, with his 37-year-old partner-in-crime general manager, Mike Tannenbaum, an Ivy League lawyer with no football experience, attempting to reverse a depressing trend of mediocrity or bust.

Since the two took the job of breathing life into a flat-lined football team, I've seen little evidence they are ready for the task. Outside of drafting "the next great left tackle" D'Brickashaw Ferguson with the fourth overall pick (Mike Williams, Bills fans?) and top college center prospect Nick Mangold, the dynamic duo have failed to address the team's main needs.

Mainly, one player who shouldn't be is still in the offensive backfield and one who should be, tragically isn't, and the Jets have no answer for either. Chad Pennington, the prototype of china-doll quarterbacks, is still behind center, and Curtis Martin, the Hall-of-Fame running back that has put the green and white on his back for all these years, finally had his knee give way after all that heavy lifting.

The Jets, predictably, responded to the injury concerns of their primary offensive cogs in the way they have for as long as I can remember.

They traded for Patrick Ramsey, an inefficient Washington Redskins ex-first round bust, to compete with Pennington at quarterback. He performed so poorly, he's now third on the depth chart behind another part of that damn rebuilding process, second-round pick Kellen Clemens.

At least at quarterback, my J-E-T-S had a backup plan. The 33-year-old Martin expressed concerns before the draft about his balky knee, pressing the Jets front office to draft an immediate successor. Tannenbaum and Mangini promptly ignored him, waiting until the fourth round to draft Leon Washington from Florida State. A month into the training camp, with the problem now fully evident to anyone paying attention, they traded for Kevan Barlow, who had lost his starting job with the 49ers and promptly referred to his now ex-coach as Hitler. Smooth.

So here us Jets fans are again, stuck putting our faith in an unproven head coach, with an unproven staff, and a general manager who seems increasingly lost.

But Jets fans never fear, we're only five years away from the next five-year plan.