John Idzik: The quiet man at the helm of the New York Jets

…a patient approach to New York Jets Free Agency

By C.J. DeSimone, co-host of the C & C Football Factory

When the Seattle Seahawks won this year’s Super Bowl in MetLife Stadium, many Jet fans wondered if this was a sign of things to come under the John Idzik regime. After all, Idzik was the primary architect, laying down the foundation for Seattle’s sustained success by making smart free agency moves coupled with a solid draft class. Their success was not automatic by any means, but they remained consistent and competitive year after year. They allowed their team to develop and improve, while adding pieces that improved key positions using the same philosophy until it finally bore fruit last year.

Two of the biggest keys that consistently get overlooked in this process: not making the ‘splashy’ free agent signings, sometimes over-paying to land that ‘big name’, and building and fortifying a solid, young core that is replenished yearly via the NFL Draft. These are the key components that need to be ever-present if you are to build a winning franchise. The New York Jets are clearly in the infancy of this delicate and pain-staking process IF they stay the course that they are currently travelling on.

John Idzik’s approach to the 2014 off-season has been simple: weigh all of your options and wait for the best time to strike. Jets fans, knowing how much cap room the organization will have after the ‘dead weight’ was released, were licking their chops regarding the plethora of free agents available. They had their Twitter feeds primed and ready to celebrate those ‘shiny new toys’ coming to the Green and White stable.

Or so they thought!

If there is one thing that we have learned about John Idzik, it is that he is a man of great patience who analyses every angle there is before he makes a decision. This is the formula that he used in his tenure with Seattle, and he’s putting it to good use here. While he didn’t make any splashy moves, he did convince WR Eric Decker and OL Breno Giacomini to sign with the team. Decker is coming off of a Super Bowl appearance with Denver, and Giacomini saw limited action in Seattle but was held in very high regard by his OL coaches.

Idzik also re-signed Leger Douzable, a vital part of the Jets rejuvenated pass rush last year. The Jets also parted ways with incumbent QB Mark Sanchez (no surprise there) and signed former Eagles QB Michael Vick to challenge Geno Smith for the starting QB position this year; a move that was not very popular with the fan base once the news broke. To round out the other signings by Idzik: CB Dimitri Patterson, WR Jacoby Ford and LB Garrett McIntyre, who was with the Jets last year.

Some, if not all of these moves may leave some scratching their heads, but if you look closely, there are a lot of potential up-sides to these signings.

A lot of these signings are low risk-high reward signings; the type of deals that Idzik looks for during free agency. Some of these deals are even one-year, ‘show me’ deals that benefit the Jets more than anyone else, and the draft is still ahead of us where the infusion of youth at key positions can assist in building a competitive roster.

Many fans were screaming in disgust when free agents like James Jones, Jarius Byrd, Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie, T.J. Ward, Aqib Talib, DeMarcus Ware, Emmanuel Sanders and many others came off of the board in free agency (notice that I left out a particular free agent from Tampa), without even a peep from the Jets camp. The reason for this is simple: a lot of these free agent signings are not going to build a championship team alone. You need to have a strong, young core with a decent mix of free agents, or ‘role players’, as a good buddy of mine calls them, in order to have a balance that can start strong and stay strong throughout the season.

It is a strong draft coupled with getting the right free agent, the right piece of the puzzle that helps get a team to a championship. Making moves based on “what if’s” are what have defined this franchise in the past, and that is the reason why we have failed to win a Super Bowl.

My advice to Jets Nation: be patient and stay the course! Do you doubt that what Idzik is doing – the signings and his patience, the cool and calculated approach – are going to work here with the New York Jets? Well, watch this past year’s Super Bowl again… and you’ll get an idea of what the New York Jets may just look like in the next couple of years with Idzik at the helm.