Did he do the right thing?

Did Woody Johnson make the right moves today? Let’s take a closer look at a very busy news day at One Jets Drive in Florham Park, New Jersey . . .

Woody Johnson is right, the team wasn’t improving.

I’ve mentioned this many times – Rex’s had a middle-of-the-road staff.

There are some good coaches like the defensive line coach Karl Dunbar and the tight end coach Steve Hagan.

I think Marty Morhinweg is a decent coach, put in a rough spot – he runs a West Coast offense which is usually based on timing routes, and there was almost none of that, because that isn’t Geno’s strength.

But the cronyism on Rex’s staff, which he doesn’t seem to realize was a problem, was a problem.

It was time for a change.

John Idzik is a nice man, a decent man, but it was a bad fit.

As one long-time league executive surmised to me recently, if Idzik was going to have a shot at having success at being a GM, he was best suited to be in a small market. He’s a low-key private man. New York devoured him.

“He will go somewhere else as a cap guy, and work the next 15 years, and you won’t hear his name,” a long-time NFL player said to me.

I agree.

It’s a quarterback-driven league, and Idzik hitched his wagon to a marginal second round pick, and it contributed to the GM’s demise.

Also, that mid-season press conference, that was panned by the media, hurt him a great deal. I don’t care about “winning the press conference,” but obviously others do.

You have to give Woody credit for learning from a past mistake.

The interview process that landed Idzik the job wasn’t handled that well. The people doing the interviews, Woody, Ira Akselrad and Neil Glat are all business people. By hiring Charlie Casserly and Ron Wolf as consultants this time around, Woody admitted a mistake and fixed it. He deserve kudos for that.

I also give Woody credit for not getting distracted by the Jets’ Week 17 win in Miami. In the big picture, it was meaningless. The team finished 4-12.

I’m not saying Eric Mangini is a great coach, but it seems the longer he’s been away, the more this program has slipped. In other words, the first two years of Rex’s tenure, the two AFC Championship seasons, were with a lot of players Mangini helped draft and cultivate. They had that Bill Belichick-program mindset that Mangini instilled. The more Mangini was away, the more it became a looser ship.

So while some in the media are going to rip Woody up-and-down for whatever he does, I think he did a good job today, aside from a few words about Darrelle Revis he didn’t’ handle with aplomb.

With Rex, too many in the media are into the “Cult of Personality.”

But you know what, who cares about great quotes, who cares about us (reporters)?

This is about winning on Sunday.

This program was heading in the wrong direction.

Rex needs to change his ways. This isn’t me being a hater. I consider it friendly-fire.

Hire a better staff, hold players more accountable – learn from this.

And to Woody Johnson’s credit, he learned a valuable lesson – he needs football people helping him make major decisions like finding a new coach and GM.

And to his credit, he made a tough decision today – moving on from two decent men. It was time.

December 29, 2014

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