Jets owner Woody Johnson fired GM Joe Douglas today. The announcement was made by NFL.com’s Ian Rapoport, Tom Pelissero and Mike Garafolo. All three reporters broke the story at the same time. It was like a photo finish at the racetrack.
Former NFL GM Mike Lombardi feels that Jets owner Woody Johnson’s meddling impacted Douglas’ ability to do his job.
Lombardi feels that the long Haason Reddick holdout was illustrative of how Douglas lost power when Johnson came back from overseas in 2021 and took over as majority owner again. In other words, Christopher Johnson was more hands-off and let Douglas run the football operation with more autonomy.
“[Woody] runs the team,” Lombardi said on VSIN. “The reason Haason Reddick [wasn’t] there is because Woody is saying to Joe Douglas I’m not giving you any more money for him. That’s it. So whenever you have to go to the owner for money you’re really not the GM.”
Since Woody’s return from an ambassadorship, Lombardi feels Douglas was relegated to a lesser job than GM.
“Joe Douglas is sitting there making six million dollars a year and he’s really just the director of college scouting,’ Lombardi said.
So Lombardi feels that Woody was more in charge of the Jets’ football operation than Douglas.
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