|
 Greg Van
Voorhis
Sports Editor
One step forward might lead to two steps backward for the Jets this
season.
When Vinny Testaverde went down after lunging for a Curtis Martin fumble in the second quarter of the
Jets' 30-28 season opening loss to the New England Patriots, he brought a season full of hopes and dreams down with him.
Testaverde had surgery to repair his left Achilles tendon which he ruptured on the play, and will miss the remainder of the season.
This is the same Vinny Testaverde who was voted by his teammates as the
Jets' Most Valuable Player last season, when he carried his miracle bunch to a 12-4 season and a trip to the AFC Championships. This same game also provided the Jets, who came into the season without wide receiver Wayne
Chrebet, who broke his foot two weeks before the season began, with another setback.
Full-back/punt-returner Leon Johnson, will also miss the remainder of the season, with a torn anterior cruciate and medial ligament in his left knee, an injury which he suffered in the third quarter of the loss to the
Patriots.
Warning: The following may read like a complex mystery novel. You may not know where you are, who you are, or even what you are by the end of it, but you will have intense insight on the Jets, and some interesting information regarding some of the players. Ready? Here we
go....
Rick Mirer is the man who will be filling
Testaverde's cleats as quarterback this season. Mirer has played on four different teams since coming into the NFL in 1993. He played his first four years with the Seattle Seahawks, where he never met expectations, and was consequently traded to the Chicago Bears, who later released him. He was then picked up as a free agent by the Green Bay Packers, who quickly realized that he was not needed there and sent him packing to the Jets, via a
trade.
Rick was a highly scouted player in college, at Notre Dame, and was the second pick in the
'93 NFL Draft by the Seahawks (Drew Bledsoe was the first pick in the draft... more about that later.) After winning AFC Rookie of the Year honors in his first season in the league with Seattle, his career took a downward spiral, and he has never really found a home on any team
since.
So we shoot over to the present, and eventually over to the future for the New York Jets. The obvious question on
everybody's mind is... Can Rick Mirer lead his team to the promised land, the Super Bowl, which Testaverde was expected to do this
season?
Before we explore this question, let's take a minute out and watch the plot thicken. How many of us out there, myself included, ever thought that Vinny Testaverde would take the Jets into the post-season last year, let alone the AFC Championships? I, for one, did not. But you must remember that
Testaverde's career was very similar to Mirer's coming into last season with the Jets. He was a journey-man himself, after not being successful with his former teams, the Browns and the Ravens. He came to the Jets as a backup quarterback, but a month into the season, starting QB Glenn Foley went down, and was forced to miss the remainder of the season due to
injury.
It seems like what goes around comes around for Vinny Testaverde. It was
Foley's injury that allowed Testaverde to step into the spotlight and resurrect his career in the league. Testaverde made his second All-Pro Bowl appearance last season and was a contender for the AFC MVP trophy.
So Rick Mirer is hoping history can repeat itself. It will be up to him to determine whether or not the Jets can make it back to the post-season again, and it will be up to him to determine his own fate as well. The ball is in his hands,
literally. Now, back to Drew Bledsoe. With the first pick in the 1993
Draft, the then head coach of the New England Patriots, Bill Parcells,
currently head coach of the New York Jets, selected quarterback Drew
Bledsoe over quarterback Rick Mirer. Mirer, as I stated earlier was then
selected with the second pick by the Seahawks. Little did Parcells know
that after drafting the now star Drew Bledsoe with New England's #1
pick, he would be using the man he passed up, Rick Mirer, as his
quarterback on his new team, the Jets, against his former team and
quarterback.
Catch your breath yet? Here's more. The Jets other quarterback this
season, who also happens to be their punter, is Tom Tupa, a former New
England Patriot. He threw 6-10, for a total of 125 yards and 2
touchdowns against his former team, after Testaverde went down. He was
then replaced by Mirer, who came into the game and threw 4-11, for 28
yards and 2 interceptions, and who, despite his numbers, is slated to be
the starter for the season.
So what happened in Mirer's first start against the Jets' division
rivals, the Buffalo Bills, you wonder? How about Buffalo 17, Jets 3.
Buffalo held the Jets to the fewest points surrendered to any of the
Bills' opponents since 1992. Was it Mirer's fault? Well, Mirer threw
13-28, for 121 yards, while Doug Flutie, his Bills counterpart ran for
67 yards, 24 of which he ran in for a touchdown.
One more little piece of interesting information is that quarterback
Glenn Foley is now playing for the Seattle Seahawks, the team that
drafted Mirer. So it seems like the Seahawks and Jets have swapped QBs
without a trade, and the former Patriots coach is having his team led by
the man he passed up in the draft. Interesting, huh?
Let's also remember last season's game between the New York Jets and
Seattle Seahawks, which played a big role in the NFL's instituting the
use of instant replay by referees this season. In that game, the Jets
were down by about 5 or 6 points, with a few seconds remaining. On
fourth down, and about 5 seconds left, Vinny Testaverde did a
quarterback sneak, which the referees called a touchdown. What the
instant replay showed was that the Seahawks held Testaverde out of the
goal line, and that it was actually not a touchdown, but since the
instant replay was not allowed in football then, it remained a
touchdown. This game ultimately kept the Seahawks out of a deserved
playoff run, and pushed the Jets into first place in their division. It
seems Bill Parcells has something against the Seahawks, taking Bledsoe
in the draft, and taking the playoffs away from them with a wrong call.
Now that you have some information on the players and situation, let's
see if we can come up with a solution to my question: Can Rick Mirer
resurrect his career and win for Jets.
First of all, the quarterback position for the New York Jets' offense is
not the most difficult one on the team. Head coach Bill Parcells' plays
do not require the quarter-back to do much more than to get the job
done; he will not have to do too much thinking, just executing plays.
Don't get me wrong, the Jets don't want a lousy QB, but he doesn't have
to be Brett Favre either for them to be successful.
But Rick Mirer's past can speak for itself, and it is screaming, "I
am lousy." But, it seems like Bill Parcells is able to get his
players to grow up and dominate, as he did with Lawrence Taylor on the
Giants, Drew Bledsoe on the Patriots, Vinny Testaverde last year, and
hopefully for the Jets, Rick Mirer this year. I am a firm believer in
the theory that good things come to those who wait, and I believe in
miracles. But I don't believe that the same miracles happen to two
people on the same year two years in a row.
I know this season is only a couple of weeks old, but it already seems
like it's fourth down with under a minute to go for the Jets' season,
and they are down a touchdown, with possession of the ball at their own
10-yard line and no time-outs remaining. Rick Mirer is there to take the
snap, and you can faintly hear him saying, "Green 16... Green 16...
Hut... Hut... HELP!"
|
