I spent the best part of 45 minutes of my lunch break today reading through what seemed like hundreds of tweets in relation to the news from Manish that one "anonymous" player had questioned Mark Sanchez's leadership, motivation and work ethic. Just before I was about to start my afternoons work I made a throw away remark that the next headline I wanted to see was "Rex calls team meeting to extinguish all the BS from the locker room". It was not intended as a well thought out course of action, however after reading through some responses it seemed to be received with open arms.
Earlier today John B posted snippets of the article from the NY Daily News and then Nick Mangold's response to it. Named players (Greg McElroy) and unnamed players taking swipe after swipe has made us the laughing stock of the NFL. Mangold is saying it's rubbish, Pouha claimed no cancers in the locker room. LT has called out Holmes, Holmes seemingly has called out everyone by his antics at the end of the year. One of the great things about Social Media is that we get the players reactions immediately. If you miss them, head over to Eric Manassy's Jets Twit for a daily round up.
However the more that I think about my original tweet, the more I like the idea. Rex Ryan comes out, announces that a team meeting is being held. Everyone is required to attend and that all issues will be spoken about, rectified and the hilarity (well from opposing fans perspective) of the locker room fall out will end. Then behind closed doors, have a open forum for criticism, comments and then ideas for moving forward. A lot of the time I think that players go to the media because they don't feel listened to, for the first time since Rex has been here, he is miles away from the heartbeat of the team.
This gesture is a proactive approach, it gives the media something to work with in relation to a solution being put in place. Players are brought into line and it is expressed that what has been happening is unacceptable. It's not about running your team like the guys up in Foxborough, it's accountability and action. Unnamed players can not be disciplined and as such are complete cowards. A stop needs to be put to this now, we don't want it rolling into free agency and then into the draft. Players don't want to come in to a locker room like this.
So please Rex, a public gesture followed by a private solution. Then we can all stop peaking at 2011 in the rear view mirror and we can look forward to 2012.