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The Jets have not made any of their free agent additions available to the media yet.
The new Jets have all been interviewed by their team website, but no press conferences with the media.
I don’t care about this. You get very little out of these. And reporters saying “Congratulations” and “Welcome to New York” is cringe-worthy.
And media press conferences are put on the team’s website immediately anyway, so what is the mainstream media getting from these Zoom press conferences? No exclusivity, that is for sure.
But, honestly, who cares if these players are made available to the media in the off-season?
Maybe that story in “The Athletic,” with 30 sources, making the Jets look like a dysfunctional mess last year, was the final straw, and some in the building are thinking, “The hell with these people.”
That 30-source story was one of the low moments in recent Jets’ history, there is no way around it.
So maybe you can understand the team not wanting to be as helpful in the past, after that 30-source story.
Eventually these free agents will be made available, but these stories are less newsworthy the further away from the signing.
But one thing that 30 source story made clear was the culture needs to improve.
“I think Jets fans are in denial,” one of the authors, Dianna Russini told Barstool Sports. “They want to call people liars because they don’t want to believe it’s that bad, that the culture is that awful.”
So whether you like her story or not, the story made it clear the culture needs to improve, and Morgan Moses can help with that. In an interview with the team website after the Jets acquired him in a trade last week, the right tackle said. “Obviously being in Baltimore for two years and being a part of a winning culture, being able to be a sponge and soak that in and bring that back to here is vital to the success of this team.”
That is a powerful statement.
He knows, after the picture The Athletic story painted, that the Jets’ culture needs to improve.
Guys like Moses, and safety Chuck Clark, who both spent time with the Ravens, can help do that.
Baltimore has one of the best cultures in the league
Aaron Rodgers can help also.
A big part of this culture change is going to have to emanate from the locker room.
Because some entrenched people might not see the need for a change.
But there is a need for a culture change.
Just read The Athletic story, and that is clear.
So no more leaks, no more moral victories, no more excuses.
Make the main thing the main thing.
Think about what Moses was saying. He was with the Jets in 2021 then was away the last two years in Baltimore. He has seen culture from two different vantage points.
And he’d like to bring some of what he learned about culture in Baltimore, to the Jets.
They should be all ears.
March 19, 2024
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