How Can the Jets Win the Super Bowl Next Season?

This former Jets scout walks through how New York can be a champion next season.

Watching the Super Bowl every year for Jets’ fans is a bittersweet experience.

At least New England wasn’t in it.

54 years is a long time.

That’s how long it’s been for Jets’ fans since their beloved team was in the big game. Actually it was 54 years and one month to the date January 12, 1969.

Who could forget it, assuming you were born yet. It was the famous Super Bowl when New York’s quarterback Joe Namath guaranteed Jets’ victory against the Baltimore Colts before the game was even played!

Baltimore Colts?

That really is a long time ago.

What must the Jets do to get back to the Super Bowl again and win it?

Believe

I’ve often asked what separates the Super Bowl champions from the worst team in the league?

Everyone’s big and fast and eats a nutritional diet. Everyone sweats the same in training camp and every coaching staff works around the clock.

What’s the difference?

“The game is won or lost from the neck up,” is an old saying around the league, and it’s the truth.

This belief that the Jets will win the Super Bowl next year must come from the top. It must also be genuine. If not, it will never resonate, nor will it happen.

Words have creative power.

These championship words must be uttered out loud at the team’s headquarters…

New York Jets Super Bowl LVIII Champions!

Change the Culture

Winning is a mentality, as is losing.

I will never forget after my first season at the Jets that ended in a loss to the Broncos’ in the AFC Championship Game, I made a comment.

I said, “Well, last year sure was great, we were only one game away from the Super Bowl!”

My boss Scott Pioli, who was the Jets’ Pro Scouting Director at the time, turned and looked at me sternly saying, “One game away isn’t good enough, I don’t ever want to hear you talk like that again!”

His words still echo in my soul some two decades later.

I was part of Bill Parcells’ regime who had taken over the worst team in the league (1996: 1-15), and had New York in that AFC Championship Game two years later.

I got there in 1998, but from what a college scout at the time described to me, the first thing Parcells did was break up every clique in the building. The next thing he did was stop non football operations employees from entering the scouting departments and where the coaches were working.

Parcells also changed the look of the Jets’ uniforms and got them out of the uniforms that had long been associated with losing.

“Act like you’ve been there before,” was another Parcells’ saying I recall.

Bring in winners

“Is football important to them?”

This was one of Parcells’ critical factors of scouting.

Find players who want to win and show they want to win on game film.

I don’t give a damn about prospects running around little orange cones in gym shorts on pro days, give me the guys who block, run and tackle like they mean it on game film.

Select college prospects who are accustomed to winning and sign free agents who you’d want on your side in a bar fight.

I’ll never forget this offensive guard we had, Todd Burger, we picked up from the Bears.

He was like a bouncer who would punch a defender in the mouth if they touched his quarterback. 

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