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Phoenix – I’m sorry . . .
. . . I just don’t care about some of this stuff.
I really try to focus on things that matter – football things.
Why are some people obsessed with asking the Jets owners, seemingly every year, if there is a playoff mandate on the coach?
Aside from it being a quintessential trap question, what other purpose does this serve?
Is it a lack of question ideas or just par for the course in our “gotcha” culture?
So here we go again – is there a playoff mandate?
“I sure as hell hope we’re a playoff team,” Christopher Johnson said in Phoenix at the NFL Meetings “I think that we — look, I want to win every game. We can’t get there fast enough. I’ve said it before: I’m an impatient man. I want this team to win, and I think we have a really good chance to be a quite good team this year.”
I actually think he’s very patient, but that’s another story.
Another brilliant angle that was pushed on the owner in Phoenix – “Can the Jets overtake the Giants in the New York market?” Once again, who cares? Totally irrelevant. The Giants aren’t in the same division or conference. They don’t matter to the Jets unless they meet in the Super Bowl.
“Honestly, I’m not that worried about [overtaking the Giants],” Johnson said. “I just want to win games. All that can come. Look, if we win a Lombardi Trophy, I’ll wear it around like a crown until people are sick of me and say, ‘you take that off his head.’ In the meantime, I just want to do what I can to make this a better team and the rest of the chips will fall where they may.”
Good answer to an irrelevant narrative.
Another narrative being pushed is Mike Maccagnan is on the hot-seat. Todd Bowles got fired, so if Maccagnan doesn’t win this year, he will be the next to go. This is a bogus angle.
“I work well with Mike. I think he’s terrific at his job,” Johnson said. “He has a plan that I believe in. It’s really key that he’s working well with Adam. That relationship is really important to me. I feel good about Mike being in the building.”
I reported here last year, that according to a league source, when Bowles and Maccagnan got extensions after the 2017 season, the GM got a longer extension.
He’s not going anywhere. The owner likes working with him.
Let me just make one other comment on that last quote. Johnson said about Maccagnan, “He’s working well with Adam.”
Let’s revisit that after the draft, on the final cuts, and after the season. Remember, Todd and Mike supposedly worked well together when they first joined the Jets in 2015, and then that relationship went south, and as we reported here, there was a stretch they weren’t even speaking to each other. So let’s reserve judgement on how well they are working together.
And also, how about coming up with some more intelligent things to ask the owner, and perhaps retire the playoff mandate questions, once and for all. Yawn.
March 25, 2019
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