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It’s probably going to take more than just hiring a new GM and head coach to right the Jets’ ship.
They have had quite a few different GMs and coaches during their 14-year playoff drought.
“With Woody running the team, who is going to want to come in and take over,” asked former NFL GM Mike Lombardi on VSIN.
So many Jets fans are dismissive of Lombardi’s comments because they feel he’s a Jets hater.
All I know is Lombardi has great NFL sources all over the league which is why I quote him a lot. Is he right all the time, no, but he’s right plenty, and not only has a ton of sources, but knows a lot about organizational structure.
Now, I will say there will be plenty of candidates for the GM and head coach jobs, which are hard to land, so he’s wrong about that.
And to be fair, Lombardi was not a fan of the job Robert Saleh and Joe Douglas did with the Jets, so it’s he’s not like his friend Bill Belichick, who has made Saleh into Vince Lombardi.
We have already quoted Lombardi ad infinitum on Saleh, and that is an old story, but as far as Douglas’s dismissal, Lombardi said, “He had six years – he won 30 games. I don’t think he did a great job. I know he got A’s in every one of his drafts. I understand that. He never had a bad draft. He never really built a team – he drafted players.”
So before we get back to what Lombardi thinks needs to change with the Jets football operation, let’s read through the lines on what he said in that last quote.
The crack about how he always got good draft grades to me might be a shot at how NFL insiders and draft analysts loved the former GM perhaps because he was a source. Reporters tend to grade on a curve when they are getting stuff from somebody.
The other part is about drafting players, but not building a cohesive team, the proof is in the pudding on that one.
Maybe some of this is on the coaches, and some on the owner, but watching the Jets over the last few years, they often seemed like a bunch of individual talent playing pickup ball, but not a cohesive team.
One-year Jets coach Al Groh once said, “It’s more important to have the most team, not the most talent.”
Lombardi feels that the organizational structure Woody prefers on the football side has created some problems.
“His management style is what I would call ‘division from within,'” Lombardi said. “What he wants is to be like the United States government – to have a House, a Senate and a President and no one controls either one of the parties – always stalemates. Who solves statements? Him? That is what puts him in power. So there is never any continuity or alignment.
“He is conflict-based. He is going to ask the GM questions about the coach and then he’s going ask the coach questions about the GM, and then all come back to him for the correct answer. That is how divisiveness can operate in an organizational structure. It doesn’t work.”
The point is simple. The Jets need to hire a GM and head coach who are aligned philosophically and let them do their job, and eschew this structure like the U.S. government that often does work. Look at the gridlock in Washington D.C. regardless of which party is in power.
Lombardi also feels that the owner needs to give the new GM and head coach a budget, and not micromanage how they spend all the money.
“He wants to itemize and nitpick and line item everything that goes on,” Lombardi said about football spending decisions like staff and player moves. “‘You are not replacing that scout, I don’t want you to do that.'”
So in the opinion of Lombardi, it’s not just going to take a new GM and head coach to turn things around in Florham Park, but some other structural changes to how the football operation is run.
November 25, 2024
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