On January 31, the Jets parted ways with assistant GM Rex Hogan. Then a week later, Jets Director of Player Personnel Chad Alexander left to become the Chargers assistant GM.
Why the Jets didn’t give Alexander their vacant assistant GM job is unclear.
To lose two key high-ranking draft evaluators, three months before the Jets, is very unusual in NFL circles. Usually, individuals heavily involved in the draft, are asked to stay until after the draft, and then leave. Teams often don’t want people they pay to travel around the country to scout college players, to walk out the door with all that intellectual capital gathered on the team’s dime, this close to the draft.
But the Jets can overcome this and still have a great draft, and one big reason is an individual named Phil Savage, who serves as a senior football advisor to Jets GM Joe Douglas.
He doesn’t have a bigger title because he doesn’t work out of Florham Park. He works out of his hometown of Mobile, Alabama.
But he’s a highly-regarded talent evaluator, who worked with Douglas in Baltimore, under Ozzie Newsome, and ran the Senior Bowl all-star game for many years. He was also the Cleveland Browns GM from 2005-08.
This guy is an ace in the hole for the Jets and will help Douglas a great deal in dealing with the unusually timed departures of Hogan and Alexander.
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