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His current team just rewarded him . . .
. . . and I’m not sure why the Jets let him go.
Talking about tight end Anthony Firkser, who signed a one-year contract extension with the Tennessee Titans yesterday.
He was in camp with the Jets in 2017, and was cut on September 2 at the end of his first camp.
I thought he had a good camp and should have been kept around.
This is a teachable moment for the Jets moving forward.
Actually that might not be fair to the current regime because Firkser was signed and released by a former regime.
But moving forward, the Jets shouldn’t have the mindset that some former regimes had, where essentially the personnel decisions, sans perhaps a couple, were made before camp started.
You know how that works – all the draft picks are going to make the team, likely from the current year and season before, no matter how they look in the summer.
Personnel politics with some NFL teams can be off-the-charts, filled with self-fulfilling prophecies, rose-colored glasses, with draft picks and high-profile free agent signings.
I have seen guys have bad summers, but they had “most favored nation” status with the GM, and perhaps the coach, so they weren’t going anywhere.
One summer I saw Justin Burris and Buster Skrine have a terrible camp, getting beat repeatedly, but it was like it didn’t happen.
By the way, Burris went to Cleveland and became a better safety than corner. I’m not a genius, but I wrote repeatedly back then he was a safety due to hip stiffness and limited catchup speed, but the brass clearly didn’t see it that way. Never got that one. It was so darn obvious.
So my point about Firkser and the Jets is, you need to be 100 percent flexible, and open-minded, when you’re watching camp, and making the cuts. No agendas, no self-fulfilling prophecies, just keep the best players.
You can’t have something called “confirmation bias.” This means that you make current decisions to justify your previous decisions.
One longtime personnel guy likes to say, “You can’t draft players with the end in mind.”
Meaning you pick players, and then must have an open mind through the evaluation process, not some pipe dream about how you think things will work out at the end of the rainbow.
My gut tells me that Joe Douglas isn’t a “confirmation bias” kind of cat.
He was a part of two Super Bowl champs in Baltimore and another in Philly. You generally don’t win championships making political personnel decisions – you keep the best players at all times.
And this brings me to the Jets’ Twitter announcement on Thursday that they re-signed tight end Daniel Brown.
He deserves it.
I really thought this guy was a goner when Chris Herndon came back from his suspension last season. After all, with Herndon back, and Ryan Griffin and Trevon Wesco on the roster, why would they still need Brown?
But they kept him when Herndon returned, which turned out to be a smart decision because Herndon got hurt in his first game back.
However, Herndon returning or not, Brown should have stayed because he deserved it.
And now with Griffin, Herndon and Wesco in in the mix heading forward, they re-signed Brown. Why? Because he deserves it.
In a meritocracy, that is how it works.
The Jets didn’t treat Brown like Firkser.
Perhaps this new regime is going to have more of an open mind, and less “confirmation bias.”
And this is important if they want to take the next step as a program.
Because you don’t win by keeping all your draft picks around and claiming you had a great draft.
You win by keeping the best 53 players no matter how they were acquired.
February 14, 2020
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