In the absence of those four players, who were important in the Jets' winning the American Football Conference East on last season's last weekend, the Jets have had to insert mostly lesser talent: Santana Moss for Coles, Doug Brien for Hall, Brent Smith for Thomas and Albert Johnson for Morton.
But here lies a problem: historical fiction has been damned as a lesser talent, a repository for unnecessary emotion, inaccuracy and a fair sprinkling of anachronisms.
A lesser talent might well have gone for, "I've been around roads all my life," for example, but that's very boring and obvious.
Yet the government refused to pay for her design and the project was eventually handed over to a lesser talent — an outcome that was devastating for Ms. Hadid and a blow to architectural history.
For someone, perhaps, with lesser talent, it might have been a daunting experience.
Still, if Vettel benefited from the momentum of the Schumacher effect in Germany, that also might have been difficult to live up to for a driver of lesser talent and character.
But Florida missed the playoffs (and Bouwmeester played poorly after the deadline), then traded him to Calgary for Jordan Leopold, a solid defenseman but a lesser talent.
But why is it so hard, even for such an excellent writer, to conjure an apparently lesser talent back to life, and replicate that pulsating readability?
Salah, 22, was the supposedly lesser talent in the protracted swap that took Cuadrado, the Colombia winger, to Chelsea for a fee that could rise to £27m, but he does not deserve the status of makeweight.
Managers with lesser talent have been fired this season.
