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When it came out that the Jets were moving on from assistant GM Rex Hogan, I assumed that the team’s director of player personnel, Chad Alexander, would become the the new GM.
But then SNY’s Connor Hughes made this announcement: “BREAKING: Chad Alexander, the #Jets Director of Player Personnel, is leaving to take a promotion as the #Chargers assistant general manager, sources tell @SNYtv.”
Hughes also made the Hogan announcement a couple of weeks ago.
In his tweet breaking the Hogan story, Hughes wrote: “Hogan is well respected around the league. He will be a sought-after front office free agent.”
This time he added: “Alexander will be a GM in short order. He’s a rising star in (the) front office world.”
I personally couldn’t tell you much about Hogan and Alexander. It’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff here. With Joe Douglas being the GM, and having final say on personnel moves, it’s hard to know what decisions people beneath him, or any GM, are actually making.
And I’ve never had a chance to read any of the scouting reports they wrote up on prospects. Not privi to that stuff.
So if you were to ask me to evaluate Hogan and Alexander, I can’t help you much. Evaluating Douglas is much easier. The bucks stops with him.
I have to admit, Hughes has a stronger feel for how Jets personnel guys are viewed around the league.
Hughes feels these are big losses.
“The two men were Douglas’ right & left hands,” tweeted Hughes. “Will be interesting to see how they’re filled.”
There is no doubt that Hughes is extremely high on these two individuals.
The strangest part of these moves, isn’t the Jets allowing some guys to walk, or letting them leave without much of a fight, however you want to phrase it, but the timing of these departures.
It is very unusual for two men, very involved in a team’s draft prep, to leave so close to the draft in late April. Teams are 3/4 of the way through the painstaking research done on hundreds of prospects. The Jets spent a lot of money flying Hogan and Alexander around the country, putting them up in nice hotels, renting cars, meals, to travel to college games and practices.
Why not make them stay through the draft?
In Washington, where they have a new GM in Adam Peters, the former GM Martin Mayhew and another personnel executive Marty Hurney, are staying with the team. Mayhew and Hurney were spearheading the Commanders’ college scouting effort until Peters arrival after the season. They are keeping Mayhew and Hurney around.
So the timing of the Hogan and Alexander departures, one in late January, and the other in mid-February, is very unique, to allow two guys intimately involved in scouting college players, to leave, and take that information somewhere else.
The Jets are cloaked in secrecy right now, so it’s hard to know why these two departures happened now.
But some suspected that major changes were coming in light of that article last week, with 30 sources, painting a very dysfunctional situation last season in Florham Park.
According to Hughes, these were two men in great demand.
However, these moves could have waited until after the draft.
Or the Jets could have made Alexander the assistant GM. Why they didn’t, I will try to research and get back to you.
February 8, 2024
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