Jets Go Hollywood

The Jets officially went Hollywood Thursday. Team Green announced they will be featured in the sixth season of the HBO series “Hard Knocks” during training camp. The Jets will play starring roles in five hour-long episodes on Wednesday nights beginning August 11.

“There’s no other team in the league right now that’s kind of more interesting than the New York Jets,” Owner Woody Johnson said."We have our Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg in Rex Ryan.”

“This is going to be a great opportunity even for the casual NFL fan to sit back and jump on board this Jets bandwagon,” Ryan said. “This is a team that’s going in a direction of a Super Bowl. So hop on board. We have nothing to hide. This football team might be a little bit different than others that have been covered. We actually have fun.”

Although general manager Mike Tannenbaum “admittedly had a lot of concerns, a lot of reluctance at first” with the project, NFL Films assured the Jets that footage that might compromise the team from a competitive standpoint would be left on the cutting room floor.

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41 years since the last Super Bowl. There will indeed be some bandwagon jumping. I, too, am concerned about the Jets heads swelling without much justification. On a related note, looks like Gang Green may go criminal to upgrade at the wideout position. The other choice is old and small.

Did the New York Jets Just Acquire a Second Shut-Down Corner?

The New York Jets announced late tonight that they have reached agreement with the San Diego Chargers to acquire cornerback Antonio Cromartie in a trade.Details of the trade were not available but more information is expected to be released Friday. Published reports said the Jets would send a 2011 draft choice to the Chargers to complete the deal, but that could not be confirmed.

Cromartie (6'2", 203) was the Chargers' first-round draft choice, 19th overall, in the 2006 draft. He had a quiet rookie season with no starts and no interceptions, then exploded on the scene in '07 with a league-high 10 interceptions, earning both a Pro Bowl berth and All-Pro status.

Blessed with scary speed, Cromartie has demonstrated the ability to be a shutdown corner - when motivated. If the Jets get the '07 Cromartie, they will have a dynamic tandem with him and Darrelle Revis. Clearly, this was a move Rex Ryan made with Peyton Manning in mind.

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For those of you unacquainted with my other team in green, the New York Jets are notorious one-and-doners. Once a decade they make it to the AFC championship game, and then they are finished. I'm not talking about the kind of finished where you play OK the season following the title game. I'm talking about falling off the map.

Pundits have been speculating, however, that Rex Ryan and his Lombardiesque drive might break this trend. Then combine this with the fact that traditional one-and-doners in the NFL are often quarterbacked by someone who had a career year and is unable to duplicate that kind of season a year later. Mark Sanchez clearly did not have a career year last season. He threw a lot of picks during the regular season, and had a very ordinary QB rating.

But the Sanchez we saw in the playoffs was much more efficient and much more effective. So if the Jets top-ranked defense actually improves with the acquisition of Cromartie, and the Sanchez we see is the one we saw in the playoffs, NFL Team Green may have a second run left in them.