AT the end of the movie “The Candidate,” Bill McKay, the freshly elected senator from California played by Robert Redford, sneaks into a room with his campaign manager, played by Peter Boyle, away from the election-night hullabaloo. McKay has gone from obscurity to Congress in the time it takes to go from opening titles to closing credits, a whirlwind trip that leaves him with only one question:
“Now what do we do?”
One of the great movie endings ever, right up there with “Rosebud,” because we never do see how good a senator Bill McKay turns out to be. We get to write the real ending any way we want to.
If only Jets fans were so lucky.
Judging from the tumult of the past two days, a prominent percentage of them are perfectly delighted that Herman Edwards will be plying his trade in Kansas City now, mismanaging someone else’s game clock, filling someone else’s locker room with fire and brimstone. I certainly never looked at Edwards and saw Chuck Noll under that headset. Or Chuck Fairbanks, for that matter.
Anyone who believes it would have been a high crime for the Jets to fire Edwards is kidding themselves. Yes, there were those three playoff appearances, which in the troubled litany of Jets ineptitude stands out like a Popsicle in an outhouse.
Still, if John Hall doesn’t make a 53-yard field goal (to say nothing of Tom Tupa rescuing a terrible long snap seconds earlier) on the last day of the 2001 season; if the Patriots, playing only for pride, don’t erase a late 11-point deficit to the playing-for-everything Dolphins on the last day of the 2002 season; and if the Steelers, playing their JV team, don’t somehow beat the playing-for-everything Bills on the last day of the 2004 season, Edwards has a very different legacy.
So Jets fans never again will be subjected to those torturous fourth-quarter moments when you saw the coach peer at the clock like it was a trigo nometry exam, and in a fair world, that would allow Jets fans a modicum of satisfac tion.
Except in this world, there rarely is anything satisfying about being a Jets fan. And this morning, inevitably, every one of them will wake up and ask the same question: “Now what do we do?”
If the Jets wanted Edwards gone so badly, they should have had the cour age to fire him. Bleeding a fourth- round pick out of the Chiefs is petty at best; at worst, you can hear Carl Peterson’s guttural guffaw all the way from the prairie. Edwards goes, but what remains is a three-headed beast determined to channel the ghosts of Steve Gutman and Rich Kotite and every other clod to draw a paycheck from this franchise.
Woody Johnson’s tenure owning the team has been, in a word, appalling. He sold out his most devoted followers, abandoned the team’s Long Island fan base by opting to permanently share a boudoir with the Giants, spitefully refusing to consider any New York locales after his West Side pyramid scheme came crumbling down. Jay Cross, Johnson’s consigliere, is perhaps the first team president in NFL history who would have difficulty telling you precisely where the 50-yard line is located.
And there is Terry Bradway, the GM who never has looked more over his head than he has this week, who has hidden under his desk for five consecutive days while his entire operation has looked as stable as a banana republic. Real GMs take charge of situations like this. Rod Thorn did when he fired Byron Scott two years ago. Ernie Accorsi did when Jim Fassel all but fired himself. Hell, even Isiah Thomas has been man enough to step forward to address his own decisions, no matter how misguided they’ve been. Bradway has remained behind the curtain, taking his fleecing by Peterson in private.
These are the men in charge of running your New York Jets into the bedrock. Somewhere, Leon Hess is sitting back and having himself a big old belly laugh. It didn’t take long for him to shed the title of worst proprietor in team history.