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After Joe Douglas had his brief press conference for television, he spoke at length . . .
. . . to the beat reporters off camera.
He covered a lot of ground with the writer. I want to get into some of this today and Friday. On Thursday, I will do another OTA Notebook from the Jets’ last practice of the spring.
One of the things Douglas needs to do as the Jets’ GM isn’t just draft and sign good players, but bring the building together. There has been too much division on the football side at 1 Jets Drive in recent years.
“[It’s] really communication and transparency, that’s the thing,” Douglas said about bringing everyone together. “Everybody has to be on the same page and know what the vision is. Everybody needs to be on the same bus and know where we are going.”
Rex Ryan and John Idzik often weren’t on the same page, and the same problem existed with Mike Maccagnan and Todd Bowles. And then Maccagnan and Adam Gase during their brief time together weren’t on the save wave length, and this lead to a coup.
So Douglas needs to bring everyone together – coaches, scouts, player personnel executives, cap people and have all of them “singing from the same hymn sheet” as the old expression goes.
With his alpha dog leadership qualities, there is a good chance he will do a great job doing this.
There were some reporter questions kind of leading the witness about how reassuring it must be to go to a team where they have a QB in place.
And he went along with it, and you can understand why. There is no way he’s going to question Darnold publicly. That wouldn’t make any sense at this time.
“The quarterback position is the most important position in all of professional sports,” Douglas said. “A guy like Sam, who has proven the way he finished the year last year, his ability, his leadership, it was very much an exciting piece moving forward.”
Look, I know this is going to piss off some Jets fans, but my position here has been consistent – can Sam Darnold become a franchise QB – absolutely; is he there yet, no. And honestly, he’s kind of had a rough spring getting comfortable in a new offense.
I like to use a term I often hear in medical conversations – “settled science.” To me, Darnold isn’t “settled science” as a franchise QB yet.
Good chance he gets to that franchise QB destination, but he’s not there yet.
There were reports that Douglas would consider his college Richmond teammate Todd McShay for a job in player personnel, but that is far from a given.
“Todd’s a good friend, but we are talking to a lot of people,” Douglas said. “We are going to cast a wide net.”
I have no idea if McShay would be a good player personnel guy in the NFL, but when McShay would say on the air over the years, “talking with personnel guys around the league,” now we obviously know who one of them was.
June 12, 2019
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