Jets' Mangini wise beyond years; Ricky, T.O. and more

	Eric Mangini, 35, has 14 years of coaching experience and was defensive coordinator for the Patriots last season. Al Bello/Getty Images
	RELATED • KING: My two surprise teams for 2006 • KING: Training camp blog -- feeling the heat • FANTASY: In-depth ratings for all 32 teams
	MAILBAG Dr. Z will answer select user questions each week in his NFL mailbag. Your name: Your e-mail address: Your home town: Enter your question:

Jets rookie head man Eric Mangini is 35, the youngest coach in the NFL. Is this so bad? Depends on how you look at it. Sure, some of his players might be as old as he is, but how old do you think Tom Landry was when he got his first job? That's right, 35.

"Oh come on now, you're not comparing me to Landry, are you?" Mangini said the other day at camp, during the rookies' week.

No, no, of course not ... I mean, well, yeah, kind of ... I mean why not?

Someone in Dallas did his homework on Landry. He was barely 26, a Giants cornerback known for his roughneck style, when he was doubling as coach Steve Owen's blackboard man. Owen chose the youngster to diagram the new 4-3 defense that would hold the league's finest offensive machine, the Cleveland Browns, scoreless in the Giants' 6-0 victory.

That was in 1950. Nine years later Landry was hired as the head coach of the expansion ragamuffin Cowboys ... and the terms for stocking a new franchise weren't as liberal as they are now. His brain was on fire with new formations and gimmicks and innovations, on both sides of the ball. How many head coaches have ever run both offense and defense?

"We couldn't beat 'em with personnel," he once said. "We had to trick' em." Yep, a true football genius.

Do I see a spark of this in Mangini? I'm not sure, but I see something. Still very fresh in my mind is the 2004 Patriots' season. For Mangini, who coached the secondary, it was like working in a war zone. His guys got hurt in bunches.

Earthwind Moreland, two weeks removed from the taxi squad, started at left corner for a couple of games. Hank Poteat, signed off the street before the playoffs, became the dime back. The third wideout, Troy Brown, was the nickel. Don Davis, a 235-pound linebacker, was thrown in at free safety. And somehow, Landry's ragamuffins, make that Mangini's ragamuffins, managed to win a Super Bowl. Oh yes, this guy has something going for him.

He is too young to have learned all the coaching clichés ... some, yes, but not the full roster of them. His observations are fresh, and in some of them I can see the footprints of the guy he worked for all those years, Bill Belichick.

"During the week," he said, "a lot of the X's and O's you put up look great. But sometimes on Sundays, their O's turn out to be better than your X's."

Here's another one: "I've seen these guys running around in shorts, but put 'em in pads and the equation changes. The hitting can change a lot of things."

We got to talking about scouting reports and I told him I always got a kick out of the phrase, "Put him where he can run to the ball." It also seems to annoy Belichick. "Yeah, run to the ball like he's at a track meet," Belichick once said. "How about the guys blocking him on his way to the ball? No one ever mentions them."

"This is one that's always bothered me," Mangini says, "the way everyone worships the timed 40-yard speed. I want to know how fast he gets from here to the ball. When we got Rodney Harrison from the Chargers to play strong safety for us, I asked him, 'Why were you drafted so low?' I mean here's a guy who might be up for the Hall of Fame some day and he was a fifth-round pick.

"He said, 'Because I didn't run fast.'"