When I was invited to write a guest Kvetch, I was pumped. One, I just like the site. I am first and foremost a football fan, and I get an inordinate amount of joy from my interactions with other football fans (he conceded, conveniently bypassing the psychoanalysis that might otherwise be warranted), and Jets fans are high on my list for their undying passion. But two, your New York Jets are constructed after my own pigskin-wrapped heart. They were built in a manner that conforms to the way I would build a team, were anyone simply wise enough to hire me to do so. And as a lifelong Browns fan, if I wanted to go the easy route, I could boil my 2010 Jets analysis down to one very precise word:

Jealousy.

It might be a deadly sin, but I watched with envy for years as New York’s brain trust loaded up on high-grade, trench-dwelling monsters like Nick n’ Brick, and making savvy trades for key components like the Sanchize (the pick for whom you scored from my Browns and your former coach, The Manguin, in return for relatively little). Of course, it hasn’t yet resulted in the kinds of winning you’re looking for, but I have long believed the Jets were on the right track. Now I am sure of it.

Under the Johnny Rockets Generalissimo, Washington has acquired a brutal reputation for blowing up free agency, and their own team in the process. The trend began early in Snyder’s term, when the team brought in famous flop quarterback Jeff George on a four-year, $18.25 million deal. One would have thought that a 30-ish year old man on his fifth NFL team who was already considered a monumental draft bust would have been worth the money, but stunningly, George sucked. A lot. He was cut after playing only eight games over the course of two seasons. Next we have potato-faced young Adam Archuleta, whom Snyder made the richest safety ever. Given a seven year, $35 million deal, Archuleta spent only a single season with the team, most of it riding the bench. When he did play, he was a nightmare, giving up play after play, with only an incredibly hot wife to show for it. The aging Deion Sanders got seven years and $56 million, Brandon Lloyd got $27 million for 25 receptions, and Jeremiah Trotter got seven years and $36 million for one awful year before returning to the team that made him famous, just as Jason Taylor would later do. Now we have $100 million defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth, who badly wants off the team, and doesn’t care whose birthday party he ruins in the process. Has there ever been a greater show of stupidity in league history? I mean, besides Matt Millen? The sheer excess of it all! The hubris the comes in believing that a single recognizable face is enough to make a team in a game where it takes 53 men working together to get the job done!

The Jets, meanwhile, have indeed been busy bees in free agency. Since Tannenbaum came in, we’ve landed guys like Damien Woody, Kris Jenkins, Alan Faneca, Antonio Cromartie, Santonio Holmes and LaDainian Tomlinson. For the most part, these are all-time guys we’re talking about here. He’s also jettisoned respected and talented leaders like Thomas Jones and Leon Washington, just as the Skins once trashed Champ Bailey. Not to mention he has yet to pay domestic products like Darrelle Revis and D’Brickashaw Ferguson.

Hold on, partner. For starters, Snyder’s greatest flaw wasn’t his pursuit of big names – it was the insane amount of money he paid them. The money he wasted on guys like Antwaan Randle El destroyed their cap space, so even if he never had to pay most of them beyond guaranteed money, and even if the Skins are the wealthiest franchise in the sport, they still had zip left to work with. Most of our new acquisitions are operating under one-year deals, designed to help us feel them out and help ensure a flexible future. Either Braylon Edwards or Santonio Holmes won’t be here in 2011, and it’s because of our fiscal prudence that we’re able to give them both trial runs and add their talents to the team in the process. Simply put, our guy is a far better evaluator of talent. Revis, Ferguson, Mangold and Harris, meanwhile, would never have been on the team in the first place were Snyder our owner, given his less than splendid drafting record (Shananhan’s not as great as some people believe him to be either). Whatever money we end up paying them will be fair, no matter how high, because they are among the best. Snyder never developed talent like that.