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Joe Douglas started his tele-press conference by saying . . .
“I apologize if you hear kids screaming or dogs barking, I am working for home,” Douglas said.
Douglas said the first week of free agency, he worked at the team’s training complex with a “skeleton crew,” but then the NFL called for all NFL complexes to shut down.
Douglas said the market favored the teams early in free agency aside from a few signings.
“The market wasn’t ideal for players and agents early on, so why were able to get a lot of one year deals,” Douglas said.
And you now what, from a team standpoint, one-year deals are ideal. Not just because you don’t have to layout as much cash, but because it keeps players highly-motivated in a brutal sport, that can lead to some losing interest in physicality, if they’re super-rich. In other words, one-year contracts are the quintessential dangling carrot to players highly-motived trying to earn big money in their NEXT deal.
Speaking of big money, Manish Mehta, asked Douglas it’s true what he heard, that the Jets hav some cash flow issues and this impacted signing.
Douglas dismissed this notion, and this was the last time Mehta was called on in the press conference. His rival at the New York Post got three questions. The Jets have grown tired of this writer, and his modus operendi, and now they’re clearly playing hard-ball with him.
Do they have cash flow issues? I can’t answer that. I don’t work in their accounting department. However, let’s be honest, most NFL owners have seen their stock market portfolios take a beating over the last month due to the Coronavirus.
So it’s quite possible that’s had an impact on the free agent spending of some teams.
But remember, there isn’t just a salary cap in the NFL, but a salary floor that teams can’t go below, or they get fined. So every team has to spend a certain amount with the parameters of the rules.
“Our plan is too be strategic and disciplined,” Douglas said today about free agency.
Considering the prior GM was guilty of giving out some very bad, huge contracts, perhaps this approach will turn out better. We shall see, what we shall see.
As for Mehta’s assertion that the Jets have cash flow issues, that probably came from a bitter agent or two that wasn’t happy with the offers the Jets gave their client(s). Perhaps this came from Robby Anderson’s agent. Who knows? The writer has been prolific with information about what happened in the Anderson negotiations, and most of it was pro-player. Mehta did admit in his question that his cash flow info came from the agent community.
You can make a strong argument that Douglas did the right thing not going crazy with his offer to Anderson, who’s had a number of off-the-field issues. That’s risky business. Good GM’s give these kind of guys one-deal deals to keep them motivated and focused. Some guys, once they get paid megabucks, they change. Not saying Anderson would definitely have done that, but when you have his mercurial track record, that risk is in the forefront of many a GM’s minds.
Did he get a long long-term big money offers (with huge guarantees)? Not that we’re aware of.
April 1, 2020
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