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The main takeaway from The Athletic’s article about the New York Jets is Woody Johnson’s dysfunctional management style, not Madden ratings

Woody Johnson’s tangible day-to-day mismanagement of the Jets is more important than explosive anecdotes about Madden ratings.

Seattle Seahawks v New York Jets Photo by Elsa/Getty Images

The top story in the New York Jets fanbase at the moment is the explosive expose written by The Athletic earlier in the week which raised the curtain on the team’s dysfunction behind the scenes. Owner Woody Johnson’s erratic management style in particular was put under the microscope in the piece.

I have to say that I believe a lot of the analysis about the article has missed the mark.

As happens with every major negative story that is published about the Jets, a portion of the fanbase immediately dismisses it. The motives of the writers and their sources are immediately called into question. People question whether the anecdotes within the article are false.

In reality nobody knows the motives of the article’s authors or their sources other than those people. Could they have axes to grind? Of course.

Of course it is also true that a person can have less than pure motives and still be telling the truth? Absolutely.

There are so many anecdotes in the articles, and the nature of some of them is so explosive that I wouldn’t be surprised if a few were lacking critical context. If you were to tell me not everything played out exactly as described in the article, I could believe it. Maybe the true nature of Woody Johnson bringing up Madden rankings in the context of player evaluations was much more benign than the article presented. I can’t prove or disprove that. Nobody really knows except the people involved.

What I find difficult to believe is that none of it is true. More importantly, there is so much smoke regarding the organization’s dysfunction, that it is tough to believe there is no fire. Could everything reported in this story (along with multiple previous exposes from The Athletic) be false? It strikes me that it would be very difficult to make up a mountain of stories this high and for the Jets to have minimal ability to refute them.

In fact, I would guess there are probably a lot more stories out there of the organization’s dysfunction waiting to be told. In reality, this article is asking us to believe a theme we have seen with our own eyes.

There are certain parts of the story that are just objective fact.

On the Dec. 3 episode of McAfee’s show, Rodgers, in reference to the 12-2 Detroit Lions, talked about how much of a difference it makes when owners back their coaches and general managers both privately and publicly. The next day, he was asked by members of the media if he felt that Jets ownership operates in that way.

“Is that a rhetorical question?” Rodgers said. “I cited an example I’ve seen. There were other examples in Green Bay, both for and maybe not, as for whoever was in charge. But I think it’s an important part of ownership to hire the right guys, set the vision and support them when the outside world is trying to tear them down.”

On follow-up, he was asked again whether he believes that’s been done in New York. “I’d have to look,” he replied. “I’ll ask you guys, has there been a lot of public comments? Supportive comments?”

The response from reporters that day? Not really, there have been firings.

“Yeah, there’s your answer,” Rodgers replied.

The Jets kept the exchange out of the transcript of Rodgers’ news conference.

It can be objectively proven that this happened. And it’s worth noting that the Jets edited their transcript, removing comments that were rather trivial in the grand scheme of things. If we are talking about credibility, I’m not sure my first instinct is to automatically believe a team that was deceptive over such a matter of such small potatoes.

In any event I don’t think this is really about The Athletic or the authors of the article. None of us are fans of The Athletic. We don’t cheer it on against ESPN or Fox Sports. How they conduct their business really isn’t much of a concern to you or me.

This also isn’t really about whether Woody Johnson actually vetoed a trade over a player’s ratings in the Madden video game.

It’s about the broken culture of this football team. It’s about how the owner is the primary person responsible for that broken culture. And it’s about the ways that broken culture has led this team down a path of failure.

The part of the article that really stuck out to me had nothing to do with Jerry Jeudy’s ranking in Madden. Instead it was this.

When Johnson left for the U.K. in 2017, his sons, Brick and Jack, were 11 and 9, respectively. When he returned, they were teenagers. Last year, Johnson started including his sons in some meetings at the team facility. For some Jets employees, the sons’ increasing involvement clarified their father’s propensity for sharing posts from X and articles from various outlets, including a blog called “Jets X-Factor,” with the organization’s top decision-makers.

“When we’re discussing things, you’ll hear Woody cite something that Brick or Jack read online that’s being weighed equally against whatever opinion someone else in the department has,” said one Jets executive.

Let me start out by saying this. I think Jets X-Factor is an excellent site. Many writers you have seen here through the years have published content on the site. Two of the site’s founders, Robby Sabo and Michael Nania, have been frequent guests on my podcast and offer top notch analysis.

To me it doesn’t matter how good an article is. Zero percent of a professional football team’s decision making process should be influenced by the owner’s teenaged sons forwarding their father an article.

Let me put it this way. If I ever found out an article I wrote played any role in a decision an NFL team made, I would think the people running the team are complete imbeciles. I like to think I offer some good opinions. I like to think I provide some thoughtful content. On a good day, maybe I do. That’s very different from saying I have any credentials to impact the way a professional football team operates.

Incredibly, a Jets spokesperson went on the record and confirmed that the owner is factoring what his teenaged sons are telling him as he considers decisions.

The Jets spokesperson disputed the idea that Brick and Jack’s observations impact the organization’s decision-making process. “It is used as a reference point; it is not determinative,” the spokesperson said. “It’s really sad that an adult would use a misleading anecdote about teenagers to make their father look bad. It’s ridiculous, quite honestly, the idea that this was used to influence the opinion of experienced executives.

“(The sons) have no roles in the organization. It’s completely ridiculous to suggest that any outside info is intended to replace the opinions of (Woody Johnson’s) staff.”

That isn’t a denial that it’s happening. The spokesperson is essentially telling us that it happens. It just isn’t a big deal because the owner doesn’t automatically do what his sons tell him to do, and the sons don’t have formal jobs with the team.

Can we just take a second to appreciate how off the walls crazy this is?

This isn’t something made up by The Athletic. The team officially confirmed it. We are supposed to accept the premise that it’s perfectly normal for two teenagers to have a seat at the table as long as their opinions aren’t 100 percent of the decision-making process.

This is unfortunately a window into the ways in which the Jets operate under Woody Johnson.

“Your job becomes managing Woody,” a current team executive said. “That’s not unique for an NFL GM — the difference here is that not only are you managing Woody, but you have to manage all the people who influence him. That could be family, that could be media, that could be people in the building.”

This passage speaks to one of the true underlying problems with Woody Johnson’s management of the team. He is extremely impulsive.

Others pointed to the owner’s words on Oct. 15, the day the Jets acquired Adams, when Johnson said, “Thinking is overrated.”

“Woody is just acting on instinct,” said a current Jets executive. “With Woody, it’s like, ‘I’m right — prove me wrong.’ You just don’t know what to expect … He’s been right enough, just with his random opinions, that (a bad decision) doesn’t dissuade him. And when he’s wrong, who’s gonna hold him accountable?”

I have heard it said multiple times over the last couple of months that the Jets’ general manager job is actually an attractive opening. Yes, Woody Johnson can be meddlesome, but that only happens when the people working for him have failed. You get a couple of years under Woody to show your stuff. I’m guessing the theory is that it’s fair at that point for the owner to take control.

This sort of hypothesis is flawed on a number of levels.

The first level is it presumes that Woody Johnson has any sort of philosophy. That requires some sort of understanding about the league, team building, and how to create a winning culture. Through his tenure, Woody Johnson hasn’t shown any consistency. He hasn’t sat by for three years and jumped in only after a cycle has exhausted itself. He has jumped in and meddled at completely random and arbitrary points.

You might have one year. You might have six. Nobody knows when he’s going to insert himself. That would require core beliefs, which in turn would require thinking. Remember, thinking is overrated.

Take Woody’s latest foray into being an active participant in Jets management. It came after the 2022 season. Now that season ended in rather ugly fashion with a six game losing streak. Still, the Jets improved their win total by three games after improving it by two the previous season. The team had the Rookie of the Year on the offensive and defensive sides of the ball. There was other budding young talent on the roster as well. Yes, there were some significant missteps, most notably the failures of Zach Wilson’s. Still, the arrow was undeniably pointed in an upward direction for the first time in quite a while. This was not a situation where the Jets were coming off a catastrophic season when Woody started imposing his will.

This brings us to the second level on which Woody Johnson’s defenders are wrong. They seem to feel it’s reasonable and good for the franchise for him to take such a heavy handed approach.

I think I have some credibility on the matter of Joe Douglas. I was a critic of his missteps. I did not ever claim he was a top five general manager. There were some areas of his management that were quite deficient.

That said, compare the position the Jets were in two years ago, the last time he was in full control of football operations, to the position in which they find themselves today. It’s impossible to argue the Jets are better off closing out the 2024 season after Woody left his imprint than they were after 2022 when he started doing so.

A frequent refrain I hear is, “Woody’s only mistake is hiring bad people.” This brushes it off as though it is a minor error like overpaying a free agent guard by half a million dollars. If Woody doesn’t hire good people, it’s the type of thing that dooms an organization. But that isn’t Woody’s only problem.

In reality, Woody hires mediocre people and then completely undercuts them with his meddling.

Over the last couple of days, I have heard a number of Jets fans bring up the Houston Texans. As recently as two years ago, the Texans were the laughingstock of the league. Now they are on their way to a second division title.

It seems like the argument is that because the Texans turned it around so fast, the Jets can too. And if the Jets can too, Woody must not be so bad.

Well the Jets absolutely can turn it around. One of the beauties of the NFL is every team no matter how down on its luck gets opportunity after opportunity to regenerate itself. And it can happen quickly.

This context is far from a positive for Woody Johnson, though. The Texans have turned it around in two years. The Jets are in year fourteen and have shown little ability to pull themselves out of the figurative ditch they are stuck in. There’s a reason for that.

A number of people have said that the Jets just need to start winning. Articles like this don’t get written about good teams. There’s something to that argument.

However, it misses a key point. While it’s true on some level this article might be an effect of losing, it also explains many of the root causes as to why the Jets have been at the bottom of the league for a decade and a half while other teams have seen their fortunes rise after briefly being in a similar state.

Over the last couple of days, I have thought a lot about the Philadelphia Eagles. You have probably forgotten this, but four years ago things seemed bleak for that franchise. The Eagles went 4-11-1 in 2020. Their coach was fired. Their salary cap situation looked bleak. One of the biggest stories in the national media that year was the franchise’s dysfunction.

Within two years, Philadelphia was in the Super Bowl. They appear to be a strong contender again.

What happened? There’s no one reason a team rises from the ashes so dramatically, but a lot of it has to do with the savvy work by their general manager Howie Roseman.

If Woody Johnson owned the Eagles in 2020, would Howie Roseman have ever been empowered to make the necessary moves to fix the franchise? I doubt it. Woody would have taken the wheel, imposed a lot of inane decisions, and fired Roseman after they failed.

When a team is down, the owner has options at their disposal. They can tell their front office and coach to shape up. Or if they think these people aren’t good enough, they can fire people and start over.

Woody doesn’t do these things. Instead he undermines his people. He imposes his will, and those decisions are shaped by the most random of sources, even his sons who came to an opinion by reading an article online.

And if Woody Johnson continues to operate the Jets like this, it doesn’t matter who the team hires as its next general manager or head coach. We will just keep having the same conversations over and over.