The New York Jets’ parting of the ways with Joe Douglas was inevitable. The fact that it happened now is somewhat surprising but does not change the reality that the Jets need a new general manager.
Much of the Jets’ fan base has been surprisingly and perhaps inexcusably behind Douglas’ moves as the general manager. Rarely if ever does an executive with a 23-55 record (excluding the 2019 season when he was hired in June and did not manage free agency or the draft) garner such loyalty, especially in the New York market.
Ultimately, the love for Douglas comes down to two things: the first two rounds of the 2022 draft and “vastly” improving the talent on the team from 2020 to the present.
I would strongly dispute even those two sentiments. I think Douglas’ draft record is vastly overrated and includes a boatload of whiffs and several completely unreasonable picks (plus it doesn’t help that the 2022 draft is underperforming this season).
I also contest the idea that a general manager with a six-year contract should be lauded for improving what may have been one of the worst rosters in NFL history. Without looking through every general manager in history, I suspect there has never been an executive with Douglas’ win-loss record who has ever gotten as long a leash to assemble a competent roster as he has.
But those arguments are not even the crux of the reason Douglas had to go. What sealed his fate for the Jets was his utter futility in pro personnel evaluation, specifically in free agency.
Note that the report in The Athletic about Woody Johnson’s complete overtaking of Douglas’ role over the last year may change some of Douglas’ record. Although all that was reported on began with Johnson vetoing a Bryce Huff contract offer, it is certainly possible that Johnson hamstrung Douglas throughout his tenure as general manager.
Still, we’ll take Douglas’ role as general manager at face value up until the point of Huff’s contract. Any moves that were not reportedly nixed or made by Johnson will be treated as Douglas’ moves.
Only two of Douglas’ free-agent acquisitions became significant contributors to the Jets and met or exceeded their contracts: D.J. Reed and John Simpson. Reed was a home run signing and has been worth every penny of his three-year, $33 million deal. Simpson may just be the steal of the 2024 free agency period when countless guards got $15+ million per year while he got a two-year, $12 million deal. He has been the Jets’ best player this season.
You can argue that Tyler Conklin falls into this category with his three-year, $21 million deal. Fine, let’s be generous and add one more.
There were also two excellent waiver-wire pick-ups (John Franklin-Myers and Quincy Williams) and a good trade this offseason (Morgan Moses).
However, Douglas had many more whiffs than hits. Consider this statistic from Jason Fitzgerald at Over the Cap.
Part of this was obviously because the Jets had such a dearth of talent on the team. But look at some of the contracts included in this list.
- QB Aaron Rodgers: 2 years, $75 million guaranteed, third-year option for $35 million
- RB Dalvin Cook: 1 year, $7 million
- WR Corey Davis: 3 years, $37.5 million
- WR Allen Lazard: 4 years, $44 million
- WR Mecole Hardman: 1 year, $5.5 million
- TE C.J. Uzomah: 3 years, $24 million
- LT Duane Brown: 2 years, $22 million
- OT George Fant: 3 years, $30 million
- LG Laken Tomlinson: 3 years, $40 million
- OG Alex Lewis: 3 years, $18 million
- C Connor McGovern: 3 years, $27 million
- EDGE Haason Reddick: 1 year, $9.5 million (max 9 games)
- EDGE Carl Lawson: 3 years, $45 million
- DT Javon Kinlaw: 1 year, $7.25 million
- S Jordan Whitehead: 2 years, $14 million
Many of these players were just flat-out terrible signings at the time they were inked (Cook, Lazard, Uzomah, Kinlaw). Those and others showed a severe lack of personnel evaluation acumen (Tomlinson, Whitehead). There were many significant overpays involved (all of the above plus McGovern, Fant, and Lewis). Then there were the injury gambles, some of whom Douglas got stuck with because of prior failed decisions (Davis, Lawson).
I did not include Mike Williams and Tyron Smith because those were revealed to have been Johnson decisions after Douglas had decided to shy away from aging, injury-prone players.
This ignores some other inexplicable personnel decisions Douglas has made — both in what he has done and what he hasn’t.
Tackle
Douglas critically neglected the tackle position in two consecutive offseasons. First, in 2022, after Mekhi Becton’s season-ending knee injury in 2021, Douglas did not bother to acquire a legitimate swing tackle during free agency or the draft.
He inexplicably let Morgan Moses walk to the Baltimore Ravens for $5 million per year. (Yes, Moses likely wanted a chance to start, but the Jets could’ve given him the opportunity to compete for the job with two injury-prone players, Becton and George Fant). The only tackle he added to the room of Becton, George Fant, Chuma Edoga, and Conor McDermott was fourth-round pick Max Mitchell, whom the Jets admittedly hoped to redshirt.
Therefore, the Jets approached training camp without a true swing tackle. They entered into discussions with Duane Brown, but at that point, Brown was likely seeking an opportunity to start. Sure enough, after Becton showed up to mandatory minicamp severely overweight (reportedly 395 pounds) and subsequently went down for the season early in training camp, the Jets were caught holding the bag.
Douglas then had to commit $11 million per year for two years to the 37-year-old Brown, who was coming off an eight-sack season and had increasingly battled injuries as he aged. Not only did this hurt the Jets in 2022 (Brown tore his rotator cuff in training camp, an injury which he battled in both seasons), but they also felt compelled to keep him as their starting left tackle in 2023 due to his back-loaded contract.
Then, Douglas took this error to dizzyingly terrible heights. In the 2023 offseason, the Jets sought their new quarterback. But if they had looked in the mirror for five seconds, they’d have recognized their offensive line was just as big an issue as their quarterback position. (Just watch Mike White against the Bills.) Jets X-Factor begged Douglas to acquire two new starting tackles that offseason.
But no, Douglas wouldn’t do so. He actually did not sign a single free agent tackle before the 2023 draft. Even if he was certain he could get a tackle at No. 13, that would have solved only one side of the line; he was still relying on Brown, coming off shoulder surgery, to be the Week 1 starting left tackle. Once he made the first-round pick swap in the trade for Aaron Rodgers, it was highly likely that all the tackles would be off the board before No. 15.
(That the Steelers jumped the Jets for Broderick Jones is incidental, as it’s possible Douglas did not even like Jones. Many viewed him as a long-term developmental project, myself included, and his play on the field has demonstrated that thus far.)
Once again, the only tackle Douglas added in the draft was a fourth-round developmental prospect (Carter Warren) whom the Jets hoped to redshirt. He signed Rodgers crony Billy Turner after the draft, but Turner’s film showcased an atrocious tackle who was marginally serviceable at guard.
With a soon-to-be 40-year-old quarterback whose numbers under pressure had progressively nosedived over the previous several seasons, Douglas came into training camp expecting Duane Brown and Max Mitchell to be his starting tackles. The rest of the country was introduced to that dysfunction on Hard Knocks, but that disaster was months (perhaps years) in the making.
Ultimately, the Jets were forced to take a last-ditch swing on Becton because their other tackles were unplayable. The results were predictable (regardless of what Becton is doing with the Eagles this year — although that may speak to the Jets’ coaching dysfunction, which is a different story).
This offseason, Douglas finally set out to correct that issue and made moves that at least made sense on paper. He brought back Moses at right tackle, signed Tyron Smith on the left side, and drafted Olu Fashanu. Regardless of the fact that Smith hasn’t worked out and Fashanu has struggled thus far, it was two years too late for Douglas.
Defensive line
In 2022, the Jets had a solid defensive line that generated significant pressure primarily due to Quinnen Williams’ breakout and John Franklin-Myers’ and Bryce Huff’s work on third down. Sheldon Rankins rebounded from an ugly first season with the Jets and also became a solid contributor. Carl Lawson was decent as the starting right defensive end, and Jermaine Johnson and Micheal Clemons gave the Jets something in the run game on early downs.
In 2023, Johnson’s breakout and Huff’s explosion buoyed a far more disruptive defensive line. Quinton Jefferson joining Williams gave the Jets a lethal interior pass-rushing duo, and Franklin-Myers once again provided critical run defense, pass-rushing, and versatility. Until Al Woods got injured, he became a wall in the middle to help the Jets’ defense in the run game.
So what did Douglas do in 2024? He proceeded to decimate that defensive line. He swapped out Jefferson for Javon Kinlaw, a move as ludicrous now as it was at the time. Leki Fotu was perhaps an even more baffling signing to replace Woods.
Let’s exclude Huff because Douglas wanted to keep him but Johnson vetoed it. Still, Douglas’ trade for Haason Reddick was highly suspect when Reddick’s agents warned him that Reddick would not join the team without a new deal. (Regardless of the fact that Johnson refused to give Reddick a new contract, Douglas should never have traded for Reddick without having a new contract in place.)
From a personnel perspective, in a vacuum, the Reddick move made sense. But when it resulted in trading away Franklin-Myers for a 2026 sixth-round pick, it was unconscionable. Franklin-Myers was the base of the Jets’ run defense and a critical contributor as a pass rusher.
Even if Reddick hadn’t held out, these moves together were irredeemable. Not to mention that Franklin-Myers’ revised two-year, $15 million deal with the Broncos was well within the Jets’ budget if they hadn’t been so desperate to get rid of one of their best long-term defensive linemen. (And for those who think he wouldn’t have given the Jets the same discount because he wanted more playing time, he’s playing 44% of the Broncos’ snaps after having been at or above 55% in his last three seasons with the Jets.)
Incidentally, Franklin-Myers is thriving with the Broncos as an interior defensive lineman on an excellent defense.
Yes, Jermaine Johnson going down for the season was the nail in the coffin for this defensive line. (Regardless of Will McDonald’s success as a pass rusher, he is one of the worst run defenders in the NFL and was meant to be a pass rush specialist rather than a full-time starter.) But Douglas sowed the seeds of the disarray with a series of baffling offseason moves.
I’m not even going to get into the lack of a backup quarterback for Rodgers and the complacency at wide receiver every year of his tenure.
Joe Douglas failed in pro personnel evaluation
Say what you want about the talent on the team, about Douglas’ supposed draft acumen, about the trade returns he got early in his tenure. The point is that when a decision came down to evaluating talent and assigning its value, he failed at virtually every turn.
As Jets X-Factor’s Michael Nania has lamented time and again, Douglas’ complete disregard for analytics may be a big reason why. It didn’t take a football genius to see that players like Dalvin Cook and Allen Lazard probably wouldn’t be upgrades for the Jets. All it took was looking slightly beyond the box scores. We’re not talking about proprietary data available only to NFL teams — just a glance at PFF.
But it goes a step deeper. You have to wonder if Douglas (or the Jets’ coaching staff) ever turned on film or knew what they were looking for. Laken Tomlinson looked like a flashy name and was coming off a statistically solid year. Many Jets fans liked the Jordan Whitehead signing.
But when Jets X-Factor’s Joe Blewett turns on the tape and starts pointing out the significant flaws in the player’s game from Week 1 to Week 18 of the previous season, you have to ask yourself, where was the Jets’ film evaluation? At positions that are easier to evaluate than offensive line and safety, you don’t need anywhere close to Blewett’s film expertise, as was the case with the Kinlaw and Fotu signings. The deep flaws were evident the moment you turned on the film.
We’re not talking about the draft where it’s all projection. We’re talking about production on an NFL field. If the player is an unrestricted free agent, it means they have four accrued seasons in the NFL. There will be tape available on that player. If they were a starter for multiple seasons, there’s significant film available. Watch the film. If you were once the vice president of player personnel on the Eagles, you’d better know what you’re looking for on the film.
Perhaps a lot of this was hubris on Robert Saleh’s part rather than Douglas’. Saleh may have believed, as NFL coaches are wont to do, that he would succeed in turning players around where other coaches failed. After all, Jets fans fell for that same rationale when the team signed Kinlaw and Fotu.
But even if that was the case, Saleh reported to Douglas, not the other way around. Douglas could have reined in that arrogance, and he never did.
There are ultimately many parts of being an NFL general manager. Executives are not judged based on one area alone. Wins and losses are the bottom line. One draft decision can make or break a GM regardless of whether the process is good or not, as it ultimately did with Douglas’ selection of Zach Wilson.
But when you look at Douglas, there is one glaring area where he consistently failed, and that’s what sunk his tenure in the end. Say what you want about his draft classes; excuse his early failures at quarterback, left tackle, and receiver and some of his strange positional choices. But it was in pro personnel evaluation that he truly ran himself out of New York.
Of all the general managers the Jets have had over the past 15 years, Douglas’ failure is perhaps the most demoralizing. It seemed like the Jets went through the right process; they hired a well-respected personnel evaluator from one of the top organizations in football. And it still didn’t work.
Where they go next, I don’t know.
