It seemed like the angry end to the Jets season bottomed out when they parted ways with offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer and replaced him with Tony Sparano on Tuesday night.
That analysis proved to be quite inaccurate. Just a few hours after the Schottenheimer news broke, Manish Mehta of the Daily News landed the latest blow to the sense that the Jets are a professional organization.
Mehta spoke to "several players and members of the organization" about Mark Sanchez and they had damning reviews of the quarterback.
Their comments, none of which were attached to names, ranged from accusations that the organization was babying him and that Sanchez was not working hard enough all the way to calls for the team to make a move to sign Peyton Manning.
Other Jets, including center Nick Mangold, fired back later in the day to support Sanchez and blast teammates who would slam the quarterback without putting their names on the criticism. Basically, it was like listening to an hour of WFAN except the guys talking were part of the Jets organization instead of Bruce from Bayside or Rocco from Metuchen.
Round and round we go and where we stop, nobody knows because the Jets can't seem to find a way to put a cap in the end to the season and turn the page to the future.
That's feeding an increasingly hard to deny perception that the Jets have lost their way less than a year after it seemed like the signs were pointing straight up.
The Manning talk is completely ridiculous at this point in time. No one knows anything about the situation because no one knows if Manning can play, if the Colts are getting rid or him or if he even wants to come to play for the Jets.
That doesn't mean some of the slams of Sanchez are totally out of place. The team has coddled him and he has been treated like a player who has achieved much more than he actually has achieved by a team that has gone out of its way to protect him at every turn.
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It's still alarming that members of the team would feel comfortable going public with such negative assessments about Sanchez, even if Mehta's article included more even-handed takes that included criticism of the offensive line and the overall offensive scheme.
The unyielding attacks on the team from within the team have to end if the Jets are going to move forward and make the changes necessary to get the team back to business on the field.
That isn't necessarily as far away as it seems right now. You need only look to the aftermath of the Meadowlands' other quarterback's third season to see that dark times can sometimes wind up turning to brighter tomorrows.
As Rich Cimini of ESPNNewYork.com points out, Sanchez's third season looks an awful lot like Eli Manning's third season from a statistical standpoint and there were no shortage of people asking if Manning would ever develop into a worthwhile quarterback.
The attacks on the organization's philosophy, the head coach and everything else also sound a lot like the response to an 8-8 Giants season that failed to live up to the promise of the previous year.
No one's predicting a Super Bowl for the Jets next season nor is there a guarantee that Sanchez will take Manning's route to the top of the quarterback pile, but their response so feels pretty similar to what the Giants did before the 2007 season.
The Giants changed coordinators, Tom Coughlin altered his approach, the team got rid of some players who weren't pulling in the right direction and found their footing.
The Jets are a mess right now, but maybe they need to be in order to fully face up to everything that's wrong with the team. Failure can breed greater success in the future as long as you take a serious look at what caused the failure so it can be eliminated and improved upon.
That's what the Jets need to do now or these last two weeks will seem like a pleasant stroll in the park.
Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City. You can follow him on Twitter and he is also a contributor to Pro Football Talk.
