Content available exclusively for subscribers
Hire good people and get out of the way . . .
When owners meddle in player personnel decisions, it often doesn’t end well.
In Indianapolis, the trade of Carson Wentz to Washington has owner Jimmy Irsay’s fingerprints all over it. Wentz is far from perfect, but he threw 27 TD’s to 7 picks last year for the Colts. The Jets would sign up for that kind of season from a QB.
Irsay was livid after the Colts lost to the Las Vegas Raiders and Jacksonville Jaguars to end the season and miss the playoffs.
Shortly after that game, Chris Mortensen reported Wentz will “probably” be traded or released before March 19.
Many think he got this from Irsay. Even if you are disappointed with Wentz, why leak that out right after the season? Take some time to review things and don’t paint yourself in a corner with such a proclamation. And also consider who you are going to replace him with in a bad free agent QB market and poor QB draft.
Longtime Indianapolis talk show host Dan Dakich, during an interview with Colts GM Chris Ballard at the NFL Combine last week (before the trade), said, “Apparently Chris Mortensen broke a trust. I don’t know if it was with you, Frank (Reich) or Jimmy. It sounds like it was with Jimmy. He broke a trust with Jimmy and now you have to deal with the fallout of having to get rid of Carson Wentz.”
Dakich said he got this from Colts beat writer Mike Chappell of Fox 59 who claims that he was told the same thing in confidence and asked not to report.
Ballard sidestepped the question, clearly not wanting to cast aspersions on his boss, but the point is that somebody, probably Irsay, who was pissed off about how the season ended said this to Mortensen, perhaps thinking it wasn’t going to reported, and it was.
Dakich added, “Jimmy Irsay is the puppet master.”
I’m not going to get into Irsay’s history here, but the guys had issues over the years – you can Google it. Hopefully he’s in a good place right now.
But he should stay out of personnel decisions, just like all owners.
And this brings me to the Jets.
In the past, Woody Johnson was involved in some key personnel decisions, like the Brett Favre and Tim Tebow trades, and the drafting of Mark Sanchez.
While the results weren’t great when Christopher Johnson took over for his brother while Woody was working in England, Christopher wasn’t a meddler in the football operation, which is good. The problem was he relied on some people like Mike Maccagnan and Brian Heimerdinger, who made many dubious decisions, and that led to some bad results.
The key is to hire the right people, and get the heck out of the way, as Robert Kraft did in New England when he hired Bill Belichick.
But you get the sense that Woody isn’t meddling since coming back from Great Britain. His brother hired Joe Douglas and Robert Saleh, and like Christopher, Woody seems to be staying out of the way and letting them do their thing. A league source told me that Christopher has been a key figure in convincing his brother to let Douglas and Saleh do their thing and not meddle.
So this is a good thing for the Jets because the best thing for an NFL owner to do is to hire good football people and let them do their jobs.
When owners get involved in football decisions, you trade for Sam Darnold, pick up his fifth-year option and then fire the offensive coordinator mid-season because the QB wasn’t playing well.
Or you perhaps leak to an NFL insider that you are getting rid of your QB, before letting the dust settled after tough end to the season, putting your GM and coach in an impossible position.
March 10, 2022
Premium will return by 9:30 pm on Friday.