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Woody Johnson has taken it on the chin over the last few months for how things went for the Jets last season. The Athletic painted a picture of an owner that meddled quite a bit.
To Johnson’s credit, he’s trying to change his ways and recently said, “I have to look in the mirror, and I have to be a better owner.”
We will see what that looks like moving forward. It seems like he’s willing to let the Jets’ new regime of Aaron Glenn and Darren Mougey do their thing.
But one thing people need to realize – if you think their Jets football operation was a little off-kilter the last couple of years, which was not all Johnson’s fault – since the prior regime held almost nobody accountable – there are a lot of NFL football operations that are off kilter.
Bill Walsh said many years when leading the San Francisco 49ers to three Super Bowl championships – “We are only competing against about eight teams.”
The league had 28 teams when he said that.
Miami Dolphins offensive tackle said after another disappointing season last year for that organization, “It takes total buy-in from everyone, not just the players – players, coaches, staff, trainers, equipment,” Armstead said. “There are only three or four teams that have that every year and usually those are the final four – they are all after one common goal. There is no individual success that is driving anyone. Those teams that are consistently successful – it’s hard to do, but necessary to win.”
Think about that – he says “only three or four teams” have total buy-in.
My point is simple – if you are going to be hard on the Jets for the way things have gone in recent years, we need to realize, they have plenty of company.
Let’s see if they can leave that “company” moving forward with Glenn leading the way. Glenn is so intimidating that he might just be the guy to get business people to stay out of the way. He’s already intimidated the media.
But when you see how the Minnesota Vikings and Pittsburgh Steelers have handled their interest in free agent QB Aaron Rodgers, it’s another reminder of what Bill Walsh was saying.
What took Minnesota so long to decide on Rodgers? This has been lingering for over a week, and now they have decided they are not interested. And by lingering, they now put more pressure on youngster J.J. McCarthy, who they are going to roll with. If they wanted to go with the kid, it would have been better for McCarthy if they never got involved with Rodgers talks, or if they had shut it down quickly. Now if the kid struggles, people are more apt to say, “Why didn’t you go with Rodgers?”
And as for Pittsburgh, why the hell would you trade for diva receiver D.J. Metcalf before you knew who your QB will be?
Do you really think Rodgers wants to play with two prima donna receivers like Metcalf and George Pickens? I doubt it. And Metcalf is a little overrated – he’s a straight-line speed guy with stiff hips, who doesn’t cut that smoothly, so that limits his route tree.
And now you have Steelers defensive end Cam Heyward criticizing Rodgers for taking too long to make his decision. Stay in your lane. Don’t hurt your team’s chances of getting the player by critizing him publicly. And you have Dianna Russini reporting that Steelers OC Arthur Smith told the Jets he would not have kept Rodgers if he got the New York HC job.
I could go on all day about what is going on with these teams these days.
It’s most of the league.
It’s bad man. It’s really trending in the wrong direction.
One thing people don’t realize is how much meddling most owners do.
People are so quick to blame GMs and coaches for personnel decisions that go awry, but you have no idea how much most of these owners meddle. But when they meddle, we usually don’t hear about it most of the time, and the GMs and coaches usually take all the public salvos.
I would love to know who picked Anthony Richardson in Indy.
Who gave Deshaun Watson that ridiculous contract in Cleveland?
Who hired the 34-year-old GM in Jacksonville with so many experienced candidates flooding the market?
At least with Woody, based on the recent story, we have sense of some football decisions he was involved with, and he has made it clear he’s going to take a different approach moving forward.
But so many other owners – we never hear about the meddling. They can mess things up, and nobody will know. They rarely fall on the sword.
Would love somebody to do an expose on what happened in Minnesota and why this dragged out.
That would be a hell of a story.
March 19. 2025
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