| 11 January 2012
Rex Sanchez has documented three seasons of New York Jets football. Through these three seasons we have been honored to have Jets offensive coordinator, err, ex-offensive coordinator, Brian Schottenheimer, a.k.a, The Beautiful Mind, share his thoughts on play calling, Mark Sanchez and his dad, Marty.
Sadly, in the evening hours of Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2012, the Jets fired TBM, making it sound like a resignation so as not to murder his coaching career. It was a classy move by an otherwise...ahem..."classless" organization. While the media was unable to get a hold of TBM on Tuesday night, Rex Sanchez did.
So, for the final time ever, The Beautiful Mind shares his Jets insights with the blog.
***
Say you buy a new washing machine. It's supposed to be one of the best on the market and it looks nice and smells nice. For the first two years everything goes incredibly well. The laundry detergent you use gets the job done, yet the washing machine naturally receives all the kudos. Then in the third year, the stains on your clothes get a little bigger, a little dirtier, and a little smellier. All of a sudden, your clothes aren't being cleaned. But why? Your washing machine was one of the most expensive on the market. It has to work. It does work. It must work. So the only logical conclusion one can draw from that is you need a new, stronger detergent to get the machine working again, right?
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I AM THE LAUNDRY DETERGENT. I gave six years of my life to the Jets organization. In that time I led this team to three playoff berths and two appearances in the AFC Championship Game with Chad Pennington and Mark Sanchez as my quarterbacks. Let that sink in, will you? I won FOUR road playoff games with a guy who is probably a career backup quarterback. And yet after one bad season in which I had a soft running back, one wide receiver who had been in jail for two years, another who blatantly quit on the team, a clearly concussed tight end, and WAYNE HUNTER as my right tackle, all the blame falls on me?
And then there's that friggin' quarterback y'all are obsessed with. When are you going to admit HE STINKS? Bring in Tom Moore. Bring in Tony Sparano. Exhume Bill Walsh for all I care. One day you will realize if he looks like poop, smells like poop, and plays like poop, he's probably poop. In my three years with the kid his completion percentage, passing yards, touchdowns, and quarterback rating went up every season. What more do you want from me? Oh, you want me to run the ball more? OK. But then when Shonn Greene starts fumbling and getting hurt every 20 carries, and then I dare try to, that's right, ESTABLISH LT, y'all freak out! So here's a thought...
Maybe it's the washing machine that sucks. Not the detergent.
And who picked out the washing machine? You guessed it. That pretentious dick Mike Tannenbaum. He's now gone through three quarterbacks, two head coaches and an offensive coordinator without reaching a Super Bowl, but do you ever hear him receiving any blame? Of course not. Y'all just blame me, The Beautiful Mind.
Why do you call me that anyway? You thought I was in love with the Wildcat and having Sanchez line up at wide receiver and running screens with Slauson as the lead blocker? Wait until you see the shit Sparano calls. The man invented the Wildcat for cryin' out loud! I was just a realist. I was dealt a shitty hand by a guy who is infallible in the press, and I made the best of it. Just how Marty did with Steve Bono in 1995. God I loved that Chiefs team. Man did Webster Slaughter and I go on a bender after we lost to the Colts...
Anyway, I went along with the nickname "The Beautiful Mind" because for the first two years I really was beautiful, just for reasons you couldn't understand. This season, however, the beauty was gone. I became a shell of my former self. I was told by the GM we needed to throw on every play to justify signing 'Tone and Plax, and even when I told him the plan was failing after the Week 15 loss in Philly, he demanded more passing. That's why I rode Mark into the ground against the Giants. It was a means to an end. I needed to get out of here.
Where do I go now? It's hard to say. My name has been so greatly sullied by the fan base that I may be blackballed Jim Fassel-style for years to come. Wherever I do land, though, please never forget the beauty of the play-action passes in Cincinnati, Thomas Jones on fourth-and-1 in San Diego, Brad Smith's pass to Jerricho in Indy, the fade down the sideline to Braylon the following season, and every beautiful call in New England.
Sure I may have called three passing plays and not used Shonn Greene on first-and-goal in Pittsburgh, but hey, there's only so much beauty to go around in this world. Enjoy what we had together. And remember, when the new detergent makes no difference, it was Schotty who told you it was time for a new washing machine.
Signing off. Beautiful no more.
-Brian Schottenheimer
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