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The Jets are going back to their old structure.
The head coach and GM will be equals and report to the owner Woody Johnson. The coach will coach the team and the GM will handle the roster, and they will both report to Johnson.
When Christopher Johnson was filling in for Woody Johnson as Jets owner, and he teamed up GM Joe Douglas and head coach Robert Saleh, he tweaked the culture and had the coach report to the GM.
Now, Woody is changing it back to the old system, that he favors, where both report to him.
“We’ve gone back and forth,” Woody Johnson said. “They’ll both come talk to me.”
But theoretically, even if he didn’t officially switch it back until now, he essentially did.
According to former NFL GM Mike Lombardi, Douglas was “neutered” when Johnson returned from England.
“Joe Douglas has been neutered for a while now – since Woody Johnson came back from [Great Britain], he started meddling,’ said former NFL GM Mike Lombardi, the day Douglas was fired on November, 19. “He’s a meddling owner. He’s not a guy to give out paychecks and watch the game – he thinks he knows football.”
Lombardi, who is now at UNC with Bill Belichick, said this while working at VSIN as their NFL Insider, and he is tremendously plugged in around the league, after working in the NFL for 30 years. His show is missed. Not that he was always right, but you had a plugged-in straight-shooter talking NFL. Not many of those out there.
He was the first one to report that Woody Johnson wanted Mike LaFleur fired, and the Robert Saleh didn’t want to do it. The battle played out over a couple of days, but Johnson got his wish, and LaFleur was sent packing. They worked out a compromise to present it as a mutual decision and he wanted to pursue other opportunities. He eventually landed a position with the Los Angeles Rams.
That firing happened in early 2023, and Lombardi reported Johnson pushed for it, so essentially the Jets have been back to the old setup, where both the GM and the coach report to the owner, for the last couple of years.
Some would argue it’s not an ideal set-up, and that the tie-breaker between the GM and coach should be a Director of Football Operations type, not a businessman.
“Woody here is your problem with your organization, you have a horrible structure, you are too corporate,” Lombardi said after Douglas’ firing. “[Woody] wants to itemize and nitpick and line item everything that goes on.”
The owner sometimes makes public comments that create challenges for his football brass.
During an interview with ESPN on the red carpet entering the “NFL Honors” awards ceremony in Las Vegas before the last Super Bowl, Johnson said: “You need a backup quarterback. We didn’t have one last year.”
The problem with that comment was they were clearly looking to trade Zach Wilson after last season, but when the owner said they “didn’t have” a backup QB last year, and Zach Wilson was the backup QB, doesn’t that hurt the value of the player when the GM makes calls to other teams?
So this set-up, where both the GM and the coach have to report to him, could lead to some dysfunction – two’s company, three’s a crowd. This can create division between the GM and head coach. It’s like two kids fighting over something, and they go to a parent, to settle the dispute – that settlement usually favors one of the kids.
Late in the tenure of GM Mike Maccagan and head coach Todd Bowles, Jets Confidential reported back then that the two were essentially not speaking to each other for several months. An executive from another NFL team told me that at the Senior Bowl.
So some would argue it’s not a good set-up, and has not worked in the past. But Woody owns the team, so he can set it up however he would like. NFL teams are not democracies.
The one thing that might be different now is that the head coach isn’t passive-aggressive like the last few GMs and head coaches.
If he gets pissed off at what is going on, he will say it right to the boss’s face.
Aaron doesn’t mess around.
January 29, 2024
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