JetsFix Mailbag 2019

Here's part two of this year's mailbag. Remember, everyone had to ask one Jets/NFL question and one non-NFL question. Questions are in italics and my responses in normal text.

SumJetsFan • Are you excited about Gregggg Williams defense? How do you see our inside linebackers being used and will the secondary be similarly zone based and leaky to a Bowles defense?

This could be an interesting wrinkle. The obvious choice in a base 4-3 would be to put Avery Williamson as the mike and free up Darron Lee to play the weakside. However, Williams supposedly viewed Lee as a candidate to play mike when he was a draft prospect. Then again, so did Bowles at one point, but this experiment was hastily dropped.

Of course, they probably won't be in base very much anyway, so you'll see them employed much as they were last year, with Lee getting more man coverage assignments and Williamson sitting in the middle in underneath zone coverage.

I think what I'm most excited about with Gregg's defense is that hopefully they aren't going to make as many dumb mistakes as they used to.

Why aren’t you a fan of Star Trek? I’ll probably be debarred for saying this but don’t you feel Trek is more believable , more science based and as Mr Spock says more fascinating then Wars.

I'm not not a fan of Star Trek, just never really got into it. Maybe believability isn't what I'm looking for from a movie or TV show.

Bonus question: Ricky Gervais or Steve Carrell?

Yes.

Reprocity • Which would benefit Sam more next year: Better running game vs having better WR's?

Well, the running game was good at the start of the year and stunk at the end of the year, but Darnold was better at the end. That suggests the wide receivers performing well would have the bigger effect.

I have to ask though: WHY NOT BOTH?

Who would win in a fight, Boba Fett Vs Jango Fett?

Well when Jango Fett died, Boba was just a child, so the only time they could feasibly have faced one another would have been a mismatch. However, if you're talking about a hypothetical with either at their peak that's different.

With Boba being an unaltered clone of Jango, then obviously they are genetically identical, so it comes down to what they learned. Boba obviously learned a lot from Jango, but I suspect that would be a situation where "I taught you everything you know, but I didn't teach you everything I know" situation. However, Boba also spent time with and no doubt learned a lot from other bounty hunters after Jango's death.

Regardless of how much they learned, Jango still never learned that you shouldn't assume a seismic charge has blown someone up just because it explodes a couple of asteroids and Boba never learned not to bump into a blind dude standing behind him so his jet pack fires him into the side of a Sail Barge, dropping him into a pit. So I guess this fight comes down to who makes the first dumb mistake.

R in CT • Who are a few day 2 & 3 draftees if the Jets came away with, you'd say, "Okay, Macc finally genuinely seems to have changed his approach from focusing on measurables to focusing on production?"

Well, until we've had the combine I would be guessing in terms of which players are going to end up with underwhelming measurables.

One interesting one could be Quinnen Williams because the Jets seemed to shy away from "undersized" bulldozing defensive linemen in favor of the more classic guys (although Q doesn't lack for length). I think making that pick, which seems to be in play, would represent a possible departure.

But you asked about day two and three, so some good film/production guys that may not have the measurables might include the likes of Greg Gaines, TJ Edwards, Brad Koenig, Brian Peavy, TJ Hockenson and David Montgomery ... but we'll see how they test - I suspect they'll all do better than advertised.

FMK: Princess Leia, Padme Amidala, Rey?

INAPPROPRIATE. I couldn't imagine myself "F-ing", "M-ing" or "K-ing" any of them. And I would fight to the death to prevent anyone else from doing so against their will.

Official answer: No.

a57se • What is your best guess at when the Jets get to play in the Super Bowl?

I reckon early February. Not sure which year though.

If you could live in any Star Wars location, which would you choose and why?

This question was a lot harder than it should've been. Obviously, in the films, I enjoy scenes from certain places (like Tatooine) because I like seeing the different background characters they have there and the scenery in places like Felucia would be amazing to see, but these places are not necessarily habitable so would be better vacation destinations than permanent residences.

Star Wars is weird insofar as they have a lot of planets with only one characteristic. A volcano planet, a planet that's just one big city, a swamp planet, an ice planet, a desert planet and so on. This might get kind of boring compared to earth. Then again, I've always been more of a people person so maybe I'd just choose to live somewhere that there's no war and a variety of people.

The obvious answer - and in new Star Wars expanded media, everyone who is escaping from somewhere's dream destination - is Canto Bight. However, the culture, decadence and lavish lifestyle doesn't really appeal to me and is probably only reserved for the elites anyway.

Screw it, I reckon I might just go and live in that giant space slug's mouth from Empire Strikes Back. At least I'd get some peace and quiet. I just hope I can get a WiFi signal.

Joe Willie • Don't you just believe in your bones that we won't be picking this high for a long time, and therefore want us to pick a game changing superstar while we still can; instead of trading down for "good" players, cause it's going to be harder drafting from 30's from now on?

I don't know about this. I'd probably have expected 2018 to be our last time picking in the top five for a while, but here we are one year later and we're still picking third.

While it seems things are headed in the right direction, the staff they've compiled strikes me as one which could completely capitulate if things go against them. Let's hope not.

The pros and cons of potentially picking an elite star or trading back for more assets are always the same. You might find someone even better than the supposedly elite star later on or be left ruing the fact you don't have any blue-chip talent. I guess we'll see how the draft falls.

Did it make you at all uneasy to see a rank amatuer chick pick up a light saver for the 1st time and kick a Sith Masters butt?

I'll happily bend over backwards to get anything illogical in Star Wars to make sense, but you don't have to try too hard with this one.

First of all, it's established on Jakku that Rey is a bad-ass when she fights off those two guys who try to take BB-8. Secondly, it's NEVER established that Kylo Ren is proficient with a lightsaber, even though he's obviously strong with the force. We see him beat up ... a control panel and a defenseless old man. (Of course, he later shows prowess with a lightsaber in the throne room, but that's AFTER he's gone back to Snoke to finish his training). Also, he's just been shot in the hip by a bowcaster, which is powerful enough to send troopers flying through the air, so it's fair to say he's not at 100 percent.

In addition, the novelization canonizes the fact that when Kylo tried to obtain information from Rey's mind, she instead overpowers him and obtains information from his mind, including his training. And she also established a connection with the saber itself through the force.

There's enough there to suggest Rey could've held her own in that situation. If anything, I have more of an issue with Finn lasting as long as he did with no force powers, but again, I attribute this to Kylo being injured.

There's other stuff within the last few films that is more difficult to make sense of (not that I can't) but I'm okay with this and it just makes me want to find out more about Rey's connection with the force, which I'm sure we will in the next movie.

Enumerated_Powers • What actions would you take to improve the performance of the offensive line?

My philosophy would be as follows: Bring in some quality prospects and develop them alongside whatever high-priced veteran talent you can pair them with. I think young players develop better when surrounded with good players. You can carry a passenger or two if your top-end talent is good but if your whole line lacks experience and potential, they won't all develop at once; they'll just stay on the same level.

Whether the players are available at the right price to put this together is another matter. I'd trade for a good one if I could, though. Keep Shell, but surround him with better talent and I think he'll be a veteran leader himself in a few years. I don't know that any of the other young players have that potential though, so we need to add a few.

Were the names Rey meaning "king" in Spanish and Ren meaning "man" or "to recognize" in Mandarin chosen for those meanings?

Yes.

But...only as a decoy to distract us from who they actually are.

BDarc23 • What is your best guess as to who will be the Jets starting center week 1?

They're going to try to get Paradis, I guess - or maybe Morse - but if they can't then they might have to draft someone to start in the third round and they probably won't be very good for the first year. If that happens and the player really struggles or gets hurt then we're back to a Jonotthan Harrison type. I'm sure they'll add a fall-back type veteran in the Travis Swanson mold at some point.

My best guess is exactly that; a complete guess, so let's go with Elgton Jenkins.

Do you think Rey's parent will shift back to being someone known in the Star Wars universe with JJ Abrams back on board to to helm the 3rd movie?

I don't need to think, because I've actually GOT A HOLD OF THE SCRIPT. Obviously, don't read on if you don't want to know what happens...but will you be able to resist?

So SPOILERZ ALERTZ the BIG TWIST is that Rey's parentage is indeed irrelevant. However, who she is and her family background is a central tenet of Episode IX: The Final Order (that's the title, by the way) which ties all three movies together and links them back to the previous episodes.

"How?" I hear you ask. Well...

It all comes back to that Rey flashback scene in The Force Awakens which seemed important at the time but was then somewhat forgotten (seemingly). Remember that part where a young Rey is crying "come back" as her family flies away from Jakku? No, you don't ... because that wasn't a young Rey, it was a young Shmi Skywalker, crying "come back" as her family flew away from Tatooine. And by "family", I mean her twin sister ... Rey. This particular revelation also gives meaning to the infamous cave/mirror scene in The Last Jedi.

(I know what you're thinking ... wasn't that Unkar Plutt with what we believed to be young Rey on Jakku? Evidently it was not. His grandfather must've lived on Tatooine or something. Shut up.)

But, I hear you ask, Rey and Shmi aren't the same age. Aha...but that's because a certain Sheev Palpatine (the would-be Emperor) would separate the two at this young age with Rey being his back-up plan if everything didn't proceed as he had foreseen as Rey would be carbon frozen and returned to Tatooine to be displayed as a decoration at Jabba the Hutt's palace.

Anyway, some years later, the Bounty Hunter Boba Fett was called upon to transport the Emperor's back-up plan to Darth Vader aboard the newly-built first Death Star, but - having collected the casket - he found it to be empty and the body was assumed to have disintegrated in the freezing process.

(This is a bit on the nose, but explains why Vader tells Boba "no disintegrations" when he later carbon freezes Han Solo).

She hadn't actually disintegrated though, it was just a Jedi trick by the exiled Obi-Wan Kenobi, who had sensed through the force and been warned by his force ghost former master Qui-Gon Jinn that he needed to intervene.

Kenobi recovered the discarded "empty" casket and got it transported off world to the remote world of Jakku. Again, many years passed before scavengers discovered the casket within the wreckage of a Star Destroyer that was destroyed in the battle of Jakku. The casket had just been recovered and placed aboard the Star Destroyer prior to its destruction, the location of which having been sensed and logged years before by the Emperor, who arranged for it to be collected in post-death instructions that led to the attack on Jakku (with the recovery of the casket being the true motive for those attacks).

The scavengers passed the casket onto Unkar Plutt. Plutt's grandfather used to live on Tatooine and once was involved in a carbon freezing project (see?) so he was aware of the process of unfreezing and therefore was able to unfreeze the young Rey, who - after recovering from the requisite hibernation sickness and blindness - effectively began work as a slave scavenger for Unkar that continued into The Force Awakens.

So, now we know Rey's background - and obviously there are other interventions or whatever by the likes of Snoke and the Knights of Ren involved in all that. Her importance therefore is that - having duped the Jedi order into believing that Anakin Skywalker (who was actually his own creation) was "the chosen one" - Palpatine's intention was always to use her in a similar manner.

Of course, Palpatine's death - at which time he understood his back-up plan was gone, but suspected otherwise - threw a wrench in the works, as did the fact that the inherent force powers that always lay dormant within Shmi had "awoken" within Rey.

Palpatine, using Sith powers learned from his master, Darth Plagueis, would return though - ready to deliver "The Final Order" (because, you see, "The Final Order" doesn't refer to some new iteration of "The First Order", it does in fact refer to a new order he is set to make, similar to "Order 66" but way, way worse. Like galaxy-threateningly worse.

The downside for Palpatine is that by opening up the spiritual realm to bring back his own life, he also brings back a now-reinvigorated from his previous tiredness Luke as well as Anakin, which factors into the end of the movie.

It soon becomes clear that Shmi's "immaculate conception" wasn't something that was arranged before Anakin's birth on Tatooine but something put in place years earlier - when Rey suddenly also inexplicably becomes heavily pregnant with another child "conceived by the force".

This leads to one of the most bad-ass and empowering scenes in all of Star Wars, as a heavily pregnant Rey fights her way out of First Order captivity so she can get back to the rest of the resistance and get them to try and prevent the Final Order.

The rest of the movie? Rose goes on a mission with the criminally-underused Lieutenant Connix (Carrie Fisher's daughter) which serves the purpose of redeeming Rose's popularity while also keeping her away from the main trio. With the help of Lando Calrissian, Poe and Finn recapture their buddy-cop vibe from the first movie as they daringly seek to free Rey, who makes her own escape without their help and sees them heading in as she's on her way out. Maz Kanata has a bigger role, serving as Rey's route to finding out who she really is. The whole thing leads to a massive climax and stand-off between all the main protagonists...

Now, I've been saving this moment for the end of the mailbag, but I'm now going to turn to the last page to find out how the Skywalker Saga ends.

[deep breath]

Wait...what? "Written by Colin Trevorrow". Awww crap I got hold of the old script!

Um, so, in that case, I don't know.

Coming up in part three - The Marvel Cinematic Universe, music, soccer and Game of Thrones, plus more Jets of course.