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I promised last week to get into the . . .
contract extensions of Todd Bowles and Mike Maccagnan more this week.
Here we go . . .
I wouldn’t have given them two-year contract extensions.
I would have given them one-year contract extensions.
The Jets’ football power duo are now signed through 2020.
“I think they’re really quite extraordinary,” Jets owner Christopher said about Bowles and Maccagnan after the extensions were announced.
I think that praise is perhaps too effusive for the Jets’ top two football operatives who led the team to a back-to-back 5-11 seasons.
But if the Jets’ owner thinks they are both “quite extraordinary” perhaps a two-year extension is in order, or perhaps even lock them up even longer.
The Oakland/Las Vegas Raiders just gave new coach Jon Gruden a 10-year contract.
If you feel they are both “quite extraordinary” why stop at a two-year extension?
While I respect Christopher Johnson – he’s a terrific person and means well, I think “quite extraordinary” might be a little to powerful in the praise department.
I think the reason Bowles/Maccagnan were giving two-year extensions was in a small part media-related.
What am I getting at?
Well so many in the sports media make a big-deal about “lame duck” status for coaches and executives. If a coach or executive has one year left on his deal, the “lame-duck” questions and stories will be beaten to death.
So what teams have done to avoid the media’s “lame-duck” obsession is to give one-year extensions to individuals entering the final year of their contracts.
That is what the Jets did with Rex Ryan in 2014, when he was entering the final year of his contract. The Jets fired him after that season, and the Jets had to eat the last year of his deal.
But the world-view, of many, regarding these one-year extensions to “lame-duck” coaches has changed. You see, even wwhen Rex had that extra year added, to throw cold water on the “lame-duck” narrative, many still considered him a “lame-duck.”
Right after Ryan signed the extension, the New York Post ran a headline, “Rex Ryan’s new multi-year deal not as secure as it sounds.”
The point being that when you make a coaches one-year deal into a two-year deal the media now considers that “lame-duck” status as well. The bar has been moved. Many people consider one-year extensions “window-dressing” and not a true vote of confidence.
So now, to get the media to knock off the “lame-duck” questions and stories, you need to add two years to the contract, and that is what the Jets did.
They now took the “lame-duck” narrative almost entirely off the table.
I saw “almost” because if the Jets go, let’s say, 4-12 next year and the fans are in an uproar, perhaps Johnson, and top adviser Ira Axselrad, would eat the final two years of Maccagnan and Bowles contracts. Now it’s highly unlikely they would want to eat that kind of money, but if the heat becomes too intense they might.
But there is no question, by adding two years to their deals, and having them locked up for three more years, the job security questions are going to go by the wayside, taking that major distraction off the table.
January 8, 2017
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