Graves leaves – what does it mean?

The Jets lost front office executive Rod Graves today, but it probably didn’t come as a surprise to the powers-that-be in Florham Park.

This has been in the works for a while.

Graves has been named senior vice president of football administration and club services, the National Football League announced today. In his new role within the Football Operations department, Graves will oversee all club and game-related initiatives related to the Competition Committee, general managers and head coaches. Graves is responsible for the strategic development of coaching, scouting, officiating, and front office personnel, international players and coaches, the Combine series, college relations and the player pipeline.

Clearly this role is somewhat related to handling of footballs on game day, vis-à-vis “Deflate-gate.”

Here is the operative line – “Graves will oversee all club and game-related initiatives related to the Competition Committee.”

Graves came to the Jets in 2013 as assistant GM under John Idizk. This was kind of a role reversal – Idzik worked under Graves when the latter was the Arizona Cardinals GM.

The time between Idzik’s firing and Mike Maccagnan’s hiring, Graves was the defacto GM, from December 29 to January 13.

It’s hard to criticize a GM who was on the job for such a short period of time, but he made a decision that made little sense to me.

After the season, teams sign a lot of their practice squad players to future contracts. For some reason, Graves didn’t sign defensive linemen Tevita Finau and Kerry Hyder to contracts. They had been on the practice squad all year. In fact, Finau was on there for two full seasons.

Neither was on the street long. Finau immediately signed with Houston Texans, and Hyder hooked on with the Detroit Lions.

To this day, I have no idea why they weren’t signed. It’s not like you were committing to them long-term, it just keeps them in the building, for the new regime to at least check them out. Both guys have talent and looked good last summer. The Jets spent a lot of time developing them. It made no sense. It was a head-scratcher.

When Maccagnan came on board, he kept Graves employed as a contact negotiator. Maccagnan doesn’t have a background as a negotiator, so he assigned Graves and Jackie Davidson to that role.

So now Davidson has the role to herself as the Jets try to hammer out a Mo Wilkerson deal.

I think the Jets overpaid Darrelle Revis, and this has probably led to some issues with Wilkerson, who wants to be paid just as much or a little more.

It’s probably unfair to blame Graves and Davidson for this. The desire to get Revis signed at all costs probably came from higher up.

But that deal has had ramifications on the Wilkerson deal.

I don’t blame Mo for wanting to get as much as Revis. Darrelle is a 30-year-old cornerback who has had many big paydays. Wilkerson is still waiting for his first big payday.

July 8, 2015

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