The New York Jets were quiet ahead of Tuesday’s trade deadline, making just one deal on Monday: sending Andre Cisco to the Detroit Lions for a 2029 sixth-round pick.
However, the biggest story to come out of Florham Park in the past few days doesn’t involve the Cisco deal; it’s the Will McDonald dilemma and what’s come out since he requested a trade on Monday.
Ultimately, McDonald didn’t get dealt, and he remains with the Jets. Reports, though, suggest the Jets may have committed organizational malpractice in how they handled the situation.
Did the Jets drop the ball?
According to SI’s Albert Breer, the Jets are content with their current collection of draft picks and want to give the coaching staff a chance to prove to owner Woody Johnson they deserve to stick around.
“The Jets have been steadfast that they’re happy with their haul of picks, which includes three first-rounders, for 2027, and want to give their current coaching staff a shot to show owner Woody Johnson that they’re worth keeping around,” wrote Breer.
There are a lot of things wrong with that from an organizational process standpoint. First off, just because the team is happy with their current collection of draft capital, it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t add to it when the right opportunity arrives. That’s not an excuse to turn down a favorable deadline offer.
The biggest concern, though, is Johnson wanting to give Aaron Glenn and the coaches every chance to prove they are worth keeping around. Think about that for a second. The Jets are 2-7, Glenn is 5-21 in his tenure, and the organization may have made trade-deadline decisions based on giving him a chance.
That is just perplexing. Here at Jets X-Factor, we made it clear that based on history, he didn’t deserve a second season as the team’s head coach, but the Jets gave him just that, and now he is 5-21.
So, the team could be passing up on valuable long-term assets to give a 5-21 coach—the second-worst winning percentage for a Jets head coach in franchise history through 26 games—a better chance of retaining his job? That’s nothing short of absurd.
With the McDonald situation, there is a lot to unpack. Reports indicated the Jets received several offers for the former first-round pick, including potential offers in the second-round draft-pick range.
If the Jets really had a clean second-round pick on the table and turned it down, it would be fair to consider that organizational malpractice. McDonald is 27, has proven to be nothing more than a situational pass-rusher, and the Jets are approaching the point where they need to make a financial decision with him soon.
Furthermore, he has played less than 50% of the Jets’ defensive snaps this season. How much does keeping him even really help Glenn? In nine games this year, he has just three sacks and 19 total pressures, and more than a quarter of those pressures came in Week 1.
The question is, what are the Jets looking to accomplish by keeping him around? Are they hoping his value increases? If they were offered a second-round pick, it’s not going to get any higher than that, is it? Are they planning to pay him? Or are they doing this because a 5-21 head coach is trying to save his job?
The biggest issue here is the Jets’ reported approach. Take McDonald out of it. Even if you believe the Jets were right to keep him, the idea that their trade deadline decisions could be influenced by a desire to give Glenn and his staff every possible chance to save their jobs is ludicrous.
It also raises another question: Who is actually making the long-term decisions? Is general manager Darren Mougey really able to do his thing, build his own roster, and make the moves at the trade deadline? Or is the organization hindering what he can do because of Glenn’s job?
It’s important to acknowledge the ambiguity of the actual reporting, too. Trade deadline information is notoriously difficult to evaluate from the outside when it involves rumors, interest, and trade requests.
Keep this in mind: everything a reporter puts out there around the deadline has a motive behind it. Whether they are getting it from an agent or a front office, folks in the league aren’t giving that information out for fun; there is a goal behind getting it to the public.
The second-round report could have been McDonald’s representation wanting to increase pressure on the Jets to move him. Or, maybe the Jets were looking to drum up his value and create more interest.
We don’t know whether the reported second-round compensation was a straightforward offer or if there were any other conditions in the deal. That’s why I wouldn’t call this malpractice without question, but it certainly could have been.
The most concerning part is the Jets’ reported approach to handling the situation. Regardless of how hard they reset this offseason or who they draft, a build process like that is how organizations stay in the gutter.
