Gang Green Nation
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As we all know, it’s NFL draft season, which is always a time of hope for NFL fans as they pray their teams will make the right moves to ensure future success. Maybe no franchise has pinned its hopes more on a single draft than the New York Jets this year. The Jets may feel that if they can add a couple of players who can make a difference they can ride off into the sunset holding a Lombardi Trophy high in New Orleans late in the night of February 9th 2025. They may be right, they may be wrong, but either way, that’s their goal.
After a disastrous 2024 season Jets general manager Joe Douglas and head coach Robert Saleh held on to their jobs by a thread. I mean a thin thread, like a line of silk with little staying power against any pull at all. The reprieve only resulted because Woody Johnson saw their best laid plans of mice and men go awry after four snaps in 2024. You can make your own assumptions about who are the mice and who are the men; I will say no more.
Joe Douglas entered this offseason with a single goal of a Super Bowl. Normally a GM looks to the future, keeps key players in place, then adds to the talent level. This is called team building for continued success. Of course, the Jets have had zero success with Joe Douglas at the helm (no playoffs; not even close), so it was time to drain the bank account and throw everything they had into one last gasp for glory.
Let’s see what Joe has done and what he hasn’t done.
What he’s done
First, Douglas convinced Aaron Rodgers to come back for another season. I don’t know if Rodgers was going to quit after an injured season. I doubt he wanted to go out that way. Rodgers seems like a guy who wants to go out on his own terms. He’s definitely not a quitter. Yet if Joe hadn’t worked on fixing the offensive line (something all of us have been screaming about since he was hired) Rodgers might have said no thanks. I mean he stood on the sideline and watched every Jets quarterback get mauled by every defensive unit they faced.
Joe brought in wide receiver Mike Williams as a second option in the passing game, so Garrett Wilson isn’t triple teamed. Douglas tried to do that last year with the horrific contract given to Allen (stone hands) Lazard and his albatross of a $44 million contract. Lazard’s salary cap hit last year was reduced to only $3.264 million, which means this year it’s a $12,184,000 cap hit and it’s over $13 million for the next two years after that. Lazard was benched late in a year the Jets needed wide receiver help, that’s how bad he was. The Jets will be chewing on that contract for years to come once...
