THE longer Terry Bradway kept talking yesterday, the deeper he sank into quicksand. You know the old saying about how the lawyer who defends himself has a fool for a client? Same deal here. The GM who wears a flack’s hat to defend his own tenure has a buffoon for a PR man.
Four different times yesterday, as he spent 56 minutes facing the media for the first time since chaos began to creep into the plumbing at Weeb Ewbank Hall, Bradway referred to “the last nine years” of Jets history.
“This isn’t the Same Old Jets, I can assure you,” Bradway said. “I think the last nine years can attest to that.”
That would be delightful news if Bradway had anything to do with the first four years of this alleged golden era of Jets history. But from 1997-2001, Bradway was employed by the Kansas City Chiefs. Bill Parcells was the man in charge in those years. During that time, Parcells acquired, in no particular order: Chad Pennington, Curtis Martin, Laveranues Coles, John Abraham, Shaun Ellis and Kevin Mawae, otherwise known as the core elements of whatever successes the Jets have enjoyed recently.
Bradway inherited every one of those players. He inherited a team on the rise, a franchise that had shed the culture of losing that strangled it for the 3½ decades prior to Parcells’ arrival in 1997. For Bradway to latch onto Parcells’ coattails makes as much sense as Cousin Oliver taking credit for the Brady Bunch’s success. But what can you expect? Bradway would have a hell of a time filling 56 minutes extolling his own accomplishments.
“Well, I drafted Jonathan Vilma and . . . um . . . er . . . um . . . well, are there any questions?”
Bradway’s appearance yesterday makes official what we already knew: that Woody Johnson has neither the foresight nor the fortitude to do what truly needed to be done with his franchise: sweep everyone out and start with a fresh slate and a new football regime. The task facing the Jets is far more complex than the simple likes of Bradway can handle.
This is a team on the precipice of a steep decline. Say what you want about Herman Edwards, but he saw that a mile away, and he wanted no part of the collateral damage. Bradway didn’t offer one glimmer of how he intends to revamp this team; mostly he was interested in telling everyone gathered and the greater Jets populace at large that they’re wrong about him.
“I’ve done a good job here,” he said, and there’s another old axiom that says beware the man who reminds you too often of what a good job he’s done. “I’m in charge of this program,” he said later on, channeling Alexander Haig.
This is how in charge he is: After interviewing Jim Haslett yesterday morning, Bradway proudly announced “the Saints have made the playoffs six times in their history, and Haslett has coached three of those teams.” When one helpful writer pointed out that, actually, Haslett had only made the playoffs once, Bradway started to debate, and wisely thought better of it. Meaning either Haslett pulled a George O’Leary on his resume, or Bradway had only skimmed the resume before talking to him.
This is how in charge he is: Bradway dismissed even the possibility that the Chiefs might have played fast and loose with the NFL’s tampering rules – or, at the least, had taken advantage of Bradway’s various blind spots within that organization. Bradway himself said Edwards was on the phone with Dick Vermeil “every single week” for five years; you think that, maybe, Edwards had a little special insight into the developing Chiefs situation? It stretches every conceivable boundary of logic that two old friends wouldn’t talk about that. Unless you’re Terry Bradway.
Bradway was played for a sucker by Carl Peterson, and now he tries to play Jets fans for suckers, too. He kept talking yesterday, and by the end you wanted someone to drag him off the stage with an old vaudeville cane before he started going on about how he and Sonny Werblin built the ’68 Jets together.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com
