Namath Calling Mangini Out?
In an On Air Response to question given to him in the Announcer’s Box about the product he sees on the field (where FAVRE had just thrown again into double coverage on third down and missed badly, getting hit HARD in the process), he deadpanned it, didn’t parse his words:
“It’s not just the QB (Favre). There is an overall-concept problem with this team.”
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This is both funny and inspiring. Joe Namath doesn’t give a damn. He knows it just needs to be said. Live, and on-air. The insinuation is, “someone isn’t getting it”. That’s coaching. That’s design. Overall-Concept is a direct jab at the frequent Mangini-ism of the “Whole System”.
Overall-Concept = System = Mangini
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The question I have fot you is this: does the flaw in the Overall-Concept extend also to Football Operations in the Front Office with the general management? Or perhaps up to the ownership of the team? Or is the flaw isolated?
I believe the flaw is isolated with Mangini. When Mangini was first hired I tried to be optimistic and was certainly glad we didn’t hire a retread like Haslett or Tice at the time. The thing is though I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was at it’s core a hire driven by envy. We were so eager to hire a Belichick clone, so eager to copy his formula, to achieve his success, that we grabbed the closest thing we could to him, his one time assistant and a guy that had been a DC for 1 season and proceeded to lead NE to it’s worst defensive performance in years.
Mangini was never “qualified” from a traditional perspective, maybe he was never qualified to begin with??