Mike Celizic

Great coaches are like great quarterbacks; most franchises are lucky ever to have had one, and only a blessed few have had several. You never know where or when you’ll find one, but history shows that the chances are great that it won’t be by recycling someone else’s failure.

That’s why the Jets did the right thing by hiring Eric Mangini, Bill Belichick’s defensive coordinator in New England. I don’t say that because I know that Mangini, who turns 35 Thursday, is going to be a great coach or even a successful one. Only time will tell on that count. But if you want greatness, you have to be willing to take chances.

And taking Mangini, who looks young enough to be carded in bars, is taking a major chance.

He’s got the pedigree, coming from the bloodline that springs from Bill Parcells and flows through Bill Belichick. A lot of Parcells’ disciples are doing well. Belichick won three of the last four Super Bowls and John Fox, the Carolina coach, was in the big game two years ago and stands one victory away from going there again. Then there’s Romeo Crennel, who has Browns fans believing that there may yet be life on the shores of Lake Erie. And let’s not forget Charlie Weis, who’s settling in nicely in South Bend.

A great pedigree isn’t a guarantee of success, as anyone who deals in race horses could tell you. Not every scion of Secretariat was a great horse, and not every apostle of Parcells — I refer those with short memories to Ray Handley — has been a great coach. But it helps and it’s important.

As important is that Mangini isn’t recycled. One of the men interviewed for the job was former Vikings coach Mike Tice, who left Minnesota in disgrace and whose candidacy can be explained only by assuming that the NFL’s diversity policy requires teams to interview at least one knucklehead candidate for each vacancy.

Tice would have been an enormous mistake. It wasn’t that long ago that the Jets hired Rich Kotite, who had been run out of Philadelphia, under the suspicion that all Kotite needed was a change of scenery. Kotite was terrible.

That shouldn’t have been a surprise. Coaches don’t change. Tony Dungy is a terrific human being and an excellent regular-season coach who can’t seem to win the big game. That’s what he was in Tampa; it’s what he is so far in Indianapolis. Parcells is good everywhere he goes. Marty Schottenheimer is like Dungy — highly respected, successful in the regular season, and a flop in the games that matter.

Slide show   Super Bowl bound Top images from the NFL’s championship game round.

The Jets could have elevated either offensive coordinator Mike Heimerdinger or defensive chief Donnie Henderson, both of whom are widely considered to be good candidates for a head coaching job. That the team rejected both doesn’t say that they’re not qualified, but that Terry Bradway, the general manager, wanted a complete break with the Edwards era.

Elevating Heimerdinger or Henderson would have been a lot safer. But it also would have been a continuation of a relationship that didn’t quite work out.

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