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The Darron Lee situation . . .
There are rumors the Jets might trade him since they are pretty much set at inside linebacker with C.J. Mosley and Avery Williamson.
A media announcement was made this week about a potential trade.
“I spoke to general managers and executives this week who had interest in trading for Lee at the right price,” Manish Mehta wrote for the Daily News.
That flat-out remarkable reporting.
It’s hard to get general managers and executives to talk about this stuff.
But what makes this reporting even more impressive, is that scribe was able to speak to general managers and executives from specific teams that are interested in the player.
This is a journalistic tour-de-force. There is no way around that. I don’t know how he does it to be quite honest.
I have been doing this a long time, and to gather that kind of information from general managers and executives is very, very hard.
People have been critical of Adam Gase or Mike Maccagnan about tap-dancing around questions about Lee’s future.
“I know everybody is trying to figure out what’s going on and stuff, Gase said. “Here’s what I know: Darron’s on the roster. Darron’s on the roster, and when April 8 [the beginning of the offseason program] hits, then we’re going to work.“
Maccagnan was asked about it on Monday in Phoenix, and really didn’t say anything I can remember.
But I think that is patently unfair to criticize these men for not being forthright about Lee’s future.
As much as I like candor from people, objectively speaking, what to people expect them to say right now?
Obviously they will try and trade him, but they aren’t going to come out and say that.
Lee belongs with a team that plays a 4-3 defense at the weakside linebacker position.
if the Jets keep him, where is he going to play? Outside linebacker where they have numerous players like Jordan Jenkins, Brandon Copeland, Frankie Luvu, Charles Tapper and likely a big-time player on the way with the third pick in the draft?
You could use him in the sub-packages and on special teams, but how is a former first-round pick, who perhaps has a high opinion of himself, going to deal with becoming a backup/special teamer in Year Four. Will he embrace that?
And he doesn’t seem to be a Gregg Williams kind of player, because he’s not great playing downhill – too often runners trickle forward after he attempts to tackle them. That would drive Williams crazy. He wants guys going backwards after being hit, not getting two or three extra yards.
Lee belongs in a 4-3 defense as a weakside linebacker who can just run around making plays sideline-to-sideline. He’s a run-and-hit linebacker, not a stack-and-shed linebacker.
One good thing about Jets owner Christopher Johnson is he’s made it clear (at least to me, I don’t know if he said it publicly), that he wants his decision-makers to keep the best players, and not worry about draft record.
So Mike Maccagnan can’t worry for a second about how it would look to trade or cut a former first-round pick.
And look at it this way. Instead of giving Lee a second-contract, they gave a former Baltimore first-round linebacker a second-contract in Mosley. So what is the difference?
March 28, 2019
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