Florham Park, NJ May 31, 2023 -- General manager Joe Douglas and owner Woody Johnson during the Jets OTA.
I saw a tweet the other day that urged parents with children aged 4-8 not to let their children become Jets fans. The reasoning is obvious, why poison them to live the lives of despair most of us have suffered for the entirety of ours? It’s been a depressing 55(!) years since the Jets won Super Bowl III, so the only members of Jets fans with any member of them competing in the big game are also eligible for a Senior discount at the movie theater.
With ‘the highest expectations of the last 25 years’ and a HOF QB added to a team that was just ‘a QB away’, the Jets have completely stumbled out of the gate and look hopelessly lost this season. The coach was fired, more former Packers were added, and plenty of players (both former and current) have taken turns being the scapegoat for Jets fans and media to belittle and question. To see one of those scapegoats, Mike Williams, score a game-winning touchdown in his first game with his new team on the same day that the Jets scored 0 touchdowns all game was tough to swallow.
“The Jets are done… This is what rock bottom looks like” – Trey Wingo, via Twitter https://x.com/wingoz/status/1855754530467856657
I saw this tweet and the rest of Jets Twitter, my group chats, and Instagram DMs all mirror the same doom and gloom energy that a rock-bottom situation would radiate. The thing is, the Jets aren’t close to rock bottom. Was I embarrassed by the Cardinals blowout loss? Of course. Is the world ending? No. Is the Jets Super Bowl window closed? This year yes, but not necessarily in the immediate future. My 3-year-old and 1-year-old children may not be sentenced to a life of misery after all – I have five very sound reasons why you should believe me when I tell you this isn’t rock bottom.
I know the Panthers have won back-to-back games but take a step back – they are at rock bottom. When you take a step back and remove the emotion and the media frenzy surrounding this most recent loss, you’ll realize that this isn’t close to rock bottom. You sure as hell didn’t think so after the Texans game, and franchises don’t fall to the absolute lowest point on a week-to-week basis – these declines happen over time due to repeated failures from above. Let’s start the list!
I’m not a Joe Douglas fan, I’ve spent a lot of years bashing his franchise-altering decisions but one major reason he’s still employed today has been his handling of contracts since day one. He simply doesn’t hand out max deals – he’s made a career of shopping in the bargain bin for free agents and shipping off players regardless if they’ve earned a second contract with their play or not (see: Bryce Huff). While this could easily be seen as the main reason the team has such a poor record in his tenure and why he still doesn’t have an elite OL after trying to build one for 6 years, it also serves as a source of flexibility for the next GM that is (hopefully) brought in to run the Jets next year.
There are no crazy contracts, no Trumaine Johnsons or Le’Veon Bells costing the Jets 8 figures per year without even being on the team. This isn’t to say the team is flush with cap space, because they aren’t (21st in the NFL in projected 2025 cap space) but there is near-infinite flexibility moving players around. When Douglas came around, he dealt the mainstays of the team (Jamal Adams, Leonard Williams, Sam Darnold) but some contracts were untradeable and thus the Jets were limited in free agency due to cap issues. The way these Jets are set up, if the new GM wants to get rid of the current mainstays that is prerogative but there are no untradeable contracts. Perhaps Quinnen Williams, who is in the first year of a 4-year/ $96 million extension, is the biggest contract to move but I’d imagine an All-Pro defensive tackle would get quite a few calls if they made him available (I hope they don’t).
Think about the Broncos – they are trying to rebuild but the dead cap they’re paying Russell Wilson is crippling – over $50 million per year(!) is going to a guy who is playing for a different team. They also gave up a bunch of picks to get him so it inhibited their ability to grab the help they needed. This past draft was the first one since 2021 that they had a first-round pick, and with their coach picking his guy and molding him it seems like they are finally set to turn things around but they still won’t be able to be big spenders in free agency until 2026 at earliest.
Thanks to frugal Joe Douglas, the Jets aren’t in such a hole. They still have their first-round picks for the foreseeable future, 8 picks next year, and no dead contracts to anyone who will be playing for else. This gives the next guy coming in full autonomy to completely assess every player on the roster and do whatever he wants without lasting consequences. Trust me when I tell you this is a very appealing quality for prospects to consider when assessing GM jobs around the league.
I’ll keep this one short and sweet: I’m not high on Travis but for anyone on the outside looking in, you can’t say the Jets don’t have a succession plan. This is pretty important because for free agent QBs potentially negotiating with the Jets or other GMs negotiating with the Jets, Travis’s presence automatically decreases the leverage the opposition has against the Jets. Again, not saying Jordan Travis is the next Mahomes, he might not even be the next Daniel Jones but he is a young QB who was considered a fascinating prospect who only slipped down the draft board due to injury. You factor in the “tutelage” of being in the same building with Rodgers and learning from the future Hall of Famer and you have an indisputable asset in Jordan Travis. Whether they opt to continue his development, throw him into the fire by actually attempting to play him if Rodgers doesn’t return, or flip him for a high draft pick is beside the point. The point is, in a quarterback-starved league where everyone is looking for a franchise QB, you have a young mystery candidate who can provide value either on the field or in the negotiations for this team moving forward.
Despite the slander towards Garrett Wilson in the first month of the season, he has survived the harsh NY fandom and is now the popular choice to be the only player the team keeps moving forward. The truth is that the first four players drafted in 2022 all have gained the respect of their peers and are considered very good (or in some cases great) in the league. This is important for a few reasons – The first one is the answer to all those “Who would want to come here? Who would want to coach this team? Who would want to play for this team?” questions that are plaguing the media circles right now.
I think plenty of QBs would love to throw to Garrett Wilson on a regular basis. I think they would value having the most prolific catcher at the RB position in the league Breece Hall out of the backfield and lining up as a receiver in some sets. I know Sauce Gardner is the current scapegoat of the moment but plenty of defensive players and coaches view him as a top-tier talent that can be built around. Teams in rock bottom are usually there because they don’t have any building blocks for the future. This class has given the Jets three players that the league has noticed and seen as ultra-valuable commodities in the league. If the new GM comes in and decides any of them are not worth the hassle, he could get a very nice return for any of them. Of course, if it were up to me, I wouldn’t move any of them, let them play out their rookie contracts, and continue to provide value well beyond their paychecks.
I didn’t mention Jermaine Johnson II, who was actually drafted before Breece Hall so he is the third member of this big four but I haven’t seen the same level of consistent praise from other players I’ve seen from the others. I think that was going to change this year but he unfortunately tore his Achilles in Week 2 of this season. In two years he has proven to be a very athletic edge rusher who can also stop the run, which is huge in a position that has become a lot of guys who can only rush passers and are non-existent in the run game. Having someone who can do both at a high level is a huge plus that a defensive mind (such as Mike Vrabel or Brian Flores) can deploy in a variety of ways to get the most out of his skill set.
I’ll give a shoutout here to Jeremy Ruckert, who like his peers will also be cheap to keep and has a ton of untapped potential that a new GM/coach can try to unlock, but obviously the league has taken zero notice of Ruckert so far. This was the first year of his career that he wasn’t buried on the depth chart but the tight end has largely been ignored in the passing game this season so he will continue to fly under the radar. With Tyler Conklin’s contract expiring, it’s possible that the lifelong Jets fan Ruckert will have a chance to be the Jets TE1 next year and one look at his college tape will give you plenty of reasons to be excited about that. His sure hands, strength, and deceptive route running make him a candidate to succeed in a lot of different offensive schemes so he may have use in the offense next year regardless of who is calling the plays.
This might be a cop-out answer, and you might want to “worry about yourself” but the easiest way to make the playoffs in the NFL is to win your division. No matter what year it is, every NFL team will have 6 games against their divisional foes, and those who have a winning record in those games are set up for major success for the season. Considering teams make the playoffs with 10+ wins, going 5-1 against the division can secure half of the wins needed, meaning that going 5-6 in the other games can still secure a berth (or even a division title).
The Bills have been beating up the AFC East for a long time and the Patriots did the same thing before them. If the Jets were to turn around their franchise with a good coach or GM (preferably both), they could be jumping ahead of both the Dolphins and Patriots who seem to be set for long rebuilding periods. The Dolphins have a very good team but Tua is always just a tackle away from relegating the team to XFL status and it doesn’t seem like Mike McDaniel has learned how to combat this issue in the three years he’s been at the helm. They might be due for a coaching change or finally blowing up the Tua era, either way would be a setback that would take adjusting to bounce back from.
I can’t lie Drake Maye looks like someone who will be a headache for the Jets for the next 10+ years but the team as a whole might be a few years away from winning. Apart from the roster being almost completely devoid of talent, it looks like coach Jerod Mayo is in over his head and not the guy who will steer the ship. Of course, this could be premature to say of him just 10 games into the job, but does his team play hard for him? To look at it on a more macro level, look at the Cowboys, it’s been near 30 years and they still haven’t been able to re-capture the magic of their 90s dynasty. The Patriots dynasty was fun (for them, not us) while it lasted, but it’s long gone and I don’t think it’s coming back.
This completely opens up the opportunity for the Jets to challenge the Bills for the supremacy of the division. With the roster as it is, it wouldn’t take much – just a coach and some tweaking of the roster to fit the coach’s preferences are all it takes to make this team the contender we all thought it was 3 months ago. A very good team could sweep the Patriots and Dolphins, which is 4 wins on the season. The Bills are also a very beatable team, so it’s not a foregone conclusion that this team is set to sweep the 2025 Jets. If the Jets were in the AFC North or the NFC North I would be worried, but luckily for us the Jets are currently in one of the league’s worst divisions so they can beat up their divisional foes as they try to climb into relevance for the years to come.
If you’ve been following Jets Twitter, then you know exactly what this means for the New York Jets but you might not know why this is such a good thing. I think the biggest reason for the failure of this current regime was the restriction they had to endure from ownership. Woody shouldn’t be involved in any football decisions but once he returned from his post in the UK he made demands regarding quite a few football decisions.
I don’t believe that Robert Saleh is Andy Reid or anything close to that as a coach, but I do believe if he was allowed to have the staff that he wanted he would’ve performed better than he did. Woody came back, didn’t like the offense, and chose Mike LaFleur as a scapegoat. LaFleur wasn’t even unemployed for an hour before getting picked up by the Rams where he’s been ever since helping them compete in playoff games. The Jets, on the other hand, abandoned the most successful coaching tree in football and picked up Nathaniel Hackett a few months after he had arguably the worst Head Coach tenure in NFL history.
This was another Woody move, as he was playing chess and hoping to lure Queen Aaron Rodgers to his trap. Of course, he did, and Saleh (and GM Joe Douglas) rolled with the punches and just tried to make their boss happy. Douglas, a guy who we mentioned as frugal, made Allen Lazard the highest-paid free agent WR of 2023 and racked up the former Packers on the roster to help Aaron feel comfortable. And of course, fast forward to Week 5 of this current season, and an emotionally-charged Woody Johnson fires Saleh at 2-3 (not a death sentence) and doesn’t even consult the man who hired him about this move. He has consistently been overstepping his bounds and handicapping the men actually in charge of running the team, so while we ultimately end up criticizing those men, perhaps we take a step back and consider the environment those men were forced to work in.
With Christopher Johnson running the team, he had almost no involvement in the team – he fully trusted Adam Gase to make the decisions and work his magic to turn the team around. That obviously was the wrong choice and Adam Gase was a disaster, but the method Johnson used was a very valid one. Could you imagine Mike Vrabel with the freedom to actually coach and make personnel decisions without worrying about the Owner’s greed and thirst for ticket sales? That is the type of environment that normal GMs and Coaches succeed in (could you imagine Clark Hunt telling Andy Reid who to make his QB coach?) where they are given free reign to do the jobs they are hired to do.
With Christopher Johnson, we know that this will happen. The only thing is now making the right choice, which yes, is easier said than done. What makes this easier is that there is so much talent on this roster that I’d imagine there are a lot of football minds who’d have a lot of great ideas on how to maximize it. The differentiator from there is the culture part of it, which is a cliched term so important in building a sustained winner. The Lions haven’t yet won the big one but with Dan Campbell at the helm they have a culture and it appears they will be consistent contenders for the foreseeable future. The Browns, another perennial loser, were able to make the playoffs a few times under Kevin Stefanski’s regime and adopt a next-man-up mentality but the AFC North is so strong that they have returned back to their normal place (last) in the division.
With the AFC East weak and such a talented roster in the building, let Chris find the coach who will establish order in the building and stay out of the coach’s way as he turns this flight around. It can be done, I believe it will be done, and this franchise is far from done. Let’s go Jets!