When they were hired, they were told things would be set up a certain way.
When the Jets added GM Joe Douglas and then head coach Robert Saleh, they were both hired by Christopher Johnson.
When they were hired, Christopher was running the team for his brother, Woody, who was serving as United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom (2017 to 2020).
Christopher does own part of the Jets, but not as much as his brother, so when Woody came back from his assignment overseas, in 2021, he took over the team again.
According to a league source, when Christopher hired Douglas and Saleh he told them he’d take “a light touch” when it came to football matters.
What Douglas and Saleh signed up for might have changed.
Former NFL GM Mike Lombardi, now with VSIN, said on January 9 – “The rub here is when the owner wants to fire an assistant coach and the head coach doesn’t want to do it. That’s happening at the Jets.”
The coach he was talking about was Mike LaFleur, who was let go as OC a few days after this tweet.
So the bottom line is Woody is a more hands-on owner than Christopher.
Hey, it’s not unusual for an owner to force the head coach to fire a few assistant coaches after a rough season. Many owners do that.
But when an owner gets involved in personnel decisions that can be a slippery slope, and the Jets should try to avoid this.
In the past, Woody was very involved in making trades for quarterbacks like Brett Favre and Tim Tebow.
Hey, Woody can do whatever he wants, he owns the team. However, it would probably be best for the Jets to let Douglas make the personnel decisions, like which QB to sign or trade for.
That is the job Douglas signed up for when Christopher hired him.
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