Q.What was it like when you took over the Jets?
A.Nerve-wracking. It was nerve-wracking, because everything’s a first. Everything: it’s your first meeting, it’s your first staff meeting, it’s your first practice schedule, first OTA’s, it’s your first press conference. I had done one press conference, before I stood in that auditorium in New York, and the press conference I did was attended by about three people. Because it was on a slow day during training camp, and I was like, “O.K., here’s your training, O.K., here’s 100 cameras sitting in the back of the room, plus an auditorium full of people. Go be successful.”
Q.But it’s not just the media. You’re addressing a team. You’re involved with the offense. You’re setting the travel schedule.
A.Yeah, it’s really tough. And you have to think, also, I’m 34 years old, about to be 35. But it’s not like I was 20 years in the league. I was a younger guy. And I equate it a lot to parenting. Because I find it more with Jake, my oldest. When I discipline him, or when I do something, or when I parent, I heard my parents’ voices in my head. And it’s natural. But as you get to your second child, and you’ve made some mistakes, and you’ve made some good decisions, it starts becoming your voice. It starts becoming your philosophy. And I had two very strong football fathers. Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick, who have won however many Super Bowls. How do you argue with what they did? How do you sit there and go, you know what, they’re pretty good coaches, but I’m probably better here at 34? I haven’t won a game, but that’s probably the way to go. And what I’ve learned over time is you take all these different influences that you have, but then you deliver them in the way that you deliver them. You take what you think is the best part of it, the most successful components of it, and that becomes your system. But it’s hard to, it’s hard to fight all that success, all those goods things that have happened, and have the confidence to do that right away.
Q.When did you feel the 2008 season, when you started 8-3, slipping away?
A.Talking to (Eric) Barton, who’s here, during that time frame, we lost to Denver. We had a bunch of guys late to meetings that week. So we get smoked. And I said, what did you think was going to happen? You think because we’re 8-3, teams are going to play worse against us? They’re going to play better against us. And what’s going to happen, however many weeks down the road, it doesn’t matter if we don’t take care what’s in front of us now. And then as things continued to be difficult, I said, at some point, we’re going to be sitting on our couches, watching the playoffs, and some team that we beat this year is going to make us feel real bad. Well, Arizona. And Barton was watching the Super Bowl and text messages me and says, I’m sitting on my couch feeling really bad.
Q.Do you take pride in what the Jets accomplished last season, after you left?
A.Sometimes, I feel like Pete Best. He was a big part of putting that band together, but he never enjoyed Beatlemania. He was just Pete Best, the other Beatle. And yeah, I did take pride in it. Like I take pride in seeing Dustin Keller be as successful as he is. Or Revis. Or David Harris. It’s exciting, the things that Leon’s doing in Seattle. I couldn’t be happier for Leon. He’s a great guy. Right on down the line. The strides that Nick Mangold made. The strides that D’Brickashaw Ferguson has made.
That’s great stuff. They’re going to be good players for a long time.
Q.Rex Ryan gets a contract extension. Mike Tannenbaum gets a contract extension. Is it human nature to say, why me?
A.Well, you look at it that way, and you also look at it as being thankful that Randy (Lerner) recognized the good things that I did to get another opportunity so quickly. I was unemployed for six days, or eight days. And that was nice. And the difficult thing was, I had kind of seen the movie before. And now, to go through all the stuff again, you have to knock the house down, you have to dig the basement, lay the foundation. There was going to be setbacks. There was going to be labor problems. There was going to be subcontractors that didn’t come to work. But that’s just the way it was.
Q.You’re 2-5 (the team is now 3-5). Do you feel like your team is better than that?
A.I even said that to the players after the Pittsburgh game. I was pissed off, and I said, “look, I’m not up here trying to sell you anything. Because if I was trying to sell you something, it would mean I didn’t believe in it. What I’m telling you is the truth. And we are going to beat New Orleans like we should have beat Pittsburgh. And that’s THE TRUTH. O.K. I don’t have to sell you this bill of goods, because it’s not something I’m making up. It’s just THE TRUTH. So as soon as you accept it as the truth, I’m not saying, this is what we have to do, if we follow the plan and operate this way and play this way, we will win football games.”
Q.Are you a different coach now?
A.The first year, you have to go in hard. The first year, people’s view of what’s hard is based on their previous bar that’s been set of what’s hard. So even though, I was so much lighter my first year here than I was my first year in New York. It wasn’t even close. I mean, it wasn’t even the same stratosphere of hard. But compared to what they were used to, it was ridiculously hard. Now, the other thing that I’ve done a better job of is, it’s less scripted in the sense of, I’m doing, I’m just going to be who I am, I’m just going to, I always go back to the kids. I’m going to be myself.
The other thing that happened is they’ve changed, too. As much as I may have changed, they’ve changed, too. So you can be different when the group is different. You can do a lot more stuff when the group is different. When you don’t have to worry about it.
Q.What’s it like to going back to just coaching?
A.It’s great. Like I would never have been able to go watch the Halloween parade. I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it. There’s been so many things that I’ve been able to do this year that I never could have done in previous years.
Q.Popular sentiment seems to be you will be fired after this season. Are you worried about that?
A. I’ve never felt that Mike (Holmgren) put some sort of clock on, or that he’s doing anything to separate himself, or disengage, or any of that stuff. If anything, I think he’s trying to help each week, which is consistent with what he said he’d do.
Q.You have New England, then the Jets, coming into town. What will that be like?
A.Well, I’ve got all my friends coming back. I’ve got New England the first week. The Jets the second week. This is like homecoming. If anything, my time in New York prepared me for that. My second game of the season was against New England. And really, if you look at the, I remember one of my first games in New England, we lost a high-scoring game to New York at New York, and the DBs didn’t play that well. I remember, it was weird being in New England’s clothes, and coaching New England against the Jets, because I was so vested in the Jets at that point. Then it was really weird being in the Jets clothes, coaching against New England. Because I was so vested in New England at that point. And I just, now, this is my team. These are the guys that, these are my guys. And as much as I care about those other people there and want them to be successful, these are, this is our team.
http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/10/q-and-a-with-eric-mangini/?src=twrhp
