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At this point, we certainly have a better feel for where Todd Bowles stands on his players and philosophically, than we do the Jets’ GM Mike Maccagnan.
Recently, Maccagnan did a conference call with Jets beat writers. He was somewhat long-winded in his answers. This isn’t a big deal. He’s new at this, and the bottom-line is he needs to build a championship football team, not win press conferences.
But what I did was whittle down the long presser, and give you the prime cuts, so to speak. I think you will find this helpful. Here you go . . .
Q)Will all the money allotted to Revis hurt the team’s ability to sign other players?
Maccagnan: We tried to approach free agency in terms of maximizing the impact of our potential cap dollars from an opportunity cost. And to add a player of his stature, he’s obviously one of the top players at his position in the league and in my mind one of the better players in the league.
Q)Was his age (30 this season) a concern in relation to the money?
Maccagnan: I was around Champ Bailey when we drafted him back in Washington years ago and Champ was able to play at a very high level well into his 30’s and I kind of view Darrelle in the same status. I think he’s playing at a very high level and we thought he could potentially be able to play at that really high level for a number of years going forward so we thought it was worth the financial investment we made.
Q)What was your free agency strategy this year?
Maccagnan: We obviously had our particular areas that we wanted to target on our own team. Obviously, in free agency when you go out and try to get players, it’s going to be expensive and that’s why, as I said from the beginning, I want to build this team through the draft,
The cornerback position in free agency this year I thought had some depth to it and had some talent in it. That’s kind of where we allocated our money. It wasn’t that we were just going to just spend money blindly at that position. It worked out where the talent in free agency at certain positions kind of fit aspects where we wanted to address on our team.
Q)What about people saying not having a franchise quarterback lessens the impact of free agent acquisitions…
Maccagnan: I would say simply we’re trying to build the foundation for a team that has sustainable success. We’re going to try to address every position, quite frankly, in terms of improving the talent at it and making it competitive.
We’re trying to build a foundation going into the future to be a competitive team and to turn this team around on the field. We can’t address every need or everything we may target initially.
Q)Will Ryan Fitzpatrick and Geno Smith have an open competition?
Maccagnan: I would say simply we’re trying to make every position competitive. When [Todd Bowles] gets our players on the field, I’m going to refer to Todd in terms of how he views who’s first, second or third. It’s going to be a competitive environment and we’ll see how it all plays out.
Q)Did acquiring Fitzpatrick lessen the need to draft a quarterback?
Maccagnan: Quite frankly the free agency (and trades are) one step in a big process of acquiring players and talent to this team. The draft, again, you don’t really know who’s going to be available in the draft, and so my thing is simply every time you have an opportunity to improve the talent of your team, you just try to figure out a way to do that.
April 9, 2015
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