Why are the Jets so bad?

Exactly, I talk about this in another thread! Has it really been that long? I got my timelines messed up and thought that Woody brought in Parcells but, if you are accurate, would be par for the course on the rest of my diatribe. Until Woody either sells, is forced to sell or has an ENTIRE change of how his mind works, this team is doomed. It is doomed to never bring in bona fide head coaching talent along with a bona fide GM.

These billionaires live a long time! (best health care and such) which means we could EASILY be looking at Woody Johnson hanging around another 20 or 30 years!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can't wait that long.

 

Without digging too deep, there's been one constant for the past 25 years, many of which have been very much like this with varying degrees of ineptitude. It has gotten way worse over the past 13 years, obviously.

And that one constant is the owner. He has shown multiple times over the past decade or so that he is completely and utterly incapable of picking someone with any competence to run the team. Whether that be a GM, a president of football operations, a head coach. The only somewhat competent GM we've gotten is Douglas, and Woody wasn't involved in that. Blind luck? And Douglas is turning out to be nearly as much of a fool as the other ones. He's definitely done better things and built a little bit of a foundation, but his pride has destroyed him.

Washington for years never did anything because their owner was total crap. Plenty of examples in other sports as well.

Football is extremely intricate, everything is connected to everything else, you can't build things in a vacuum and hope to succeed. And striking lightning in a bottle is even more difficult because again, so many moving parts.

So the false hope we've gotten over the past year and a half or so is completely gone, and I personally, and I'm sure many others, are back to believing we will never go anywhere with this ownership. Ever.

 

Inconsistent and incompetent front office explains a lot.

Watching the Ravens game tonight reminds me of the difference of the Ravens FO and the way the Jets are run.
When the Ravens identify a safety worthy of a first round grade they end up with Ed Reed and Kyle Hamilton. When the Jets ID a first round safety talent it's Calvin Pryor and Jamal Adams.
Ravens lead the league in rushing or near the top of the league in rushing every year regardless of RB talent and injuries because they invest in sustaining an effective offensive line. Jets have Breece Hall who they can't get a carry without contact in the backfield becuase the offensive line plan was to hope that the oldest Olineman in the NFL, coming off an injury, and an injury-prone tackle who hadn't completed a regular season game in 3 years, would work out.

 

In ESPN’s “The Two Bills,” Belichick said his issue was with the Jets ownership situation. Hess died before the 1999 season and the ownership situation had not been resolved.

“Essentially the problem I had with the whole arrangement eventually was when all of this transpired there was no owner,” Belichick said. “Mr. Hess passed away before the ’99 season. There were two potential owners and that was [Woody] Johnson and [Charles] Dolan. I hadn’t spoken with either one, but I had issues with both, and it wasn’t Mr. Hess anymore, which was the original agreement or the original context we talked about. That whole ownership configuration at that point in time was a major factor in my decision much more than a personal relationship.”

That's from a NY Post article, but you can find similar info all over the internet. Woody Johnson, to answer the OP question, is the primary reason the Jets have been a laughingstock for the past 10+ years. He is a clueless buffoon, born into immense wealth, and never done anything productive or admirable of consequence, despite all the resources and influence at his disposal. Even now, as an older man, his wealth remains due to his family's prior ownership of Johnson & Johnson. According to his Wikipedia page, the highlights of his "professional" life are: his involvement in a tax avoidance scheme, which was uncovered, and resulted in his settling with the IRS and paying up what he tried to steal; and creepy, inappropriate comments he made while US ambassador to the UK during the Trump administration.

This is the guy who makes football decisions, hires and fires GMs and head coaches, establishes the "culture", and so on. Until he brings in a Parcells-like authority (Harbaugh? I don't know) who can reset the culture and make the high-level decisions, I don't think we are ever getting out of this purgatory, unless we luck into something, and even then you have to think Woody will fuck it up.

 

Disagree in this regard: he thinks he knows what he's doing. He bangs on the door of the cockpit and demands to fly the plane when he can't even fold and throw a paper one.

All the Jets are is a toy that collects compound interest. Whenever Woody the rube decides to pound boardroam tables saying stupid, delusional things like, "Super Bowl or you're all fired!", it's like somebody farting in Church as they're coughing during a funeral.

He's becoming the dumber Al Davis but 10 times more embarrassing.

 

Yup. And none of it had anything to do with Douglas. Dude freerode the Ravens and Eagles as hard as Gase freerode Peyton Manning and Hackett freerode Rodgers.

 

Love the post but the bold part ain't happening. There's a REASON this team cannot bring in a Sean Payton or a Harbaugh and that is the numb nut who owns this team. Much like Belly said, there are a whole LOT of people who have issues with Johnson and how our "ship" is run. How else can you explain a NY City team not having a name brand coach? You would THINK that NY Jets would be a premier organization to head up but the last 20+ years have proven otherwise. Until the owner goes this shit show WILL continue.

 

Yes, bad ownership - Woody - is certainly a big part of the problem, but Hess was also a bad owner until the very end when he set aside his billionaire ego and turned total control over to Parcells. To date, Woody hasn't done anything like this. I believe Douglas could've been a good GM and maybe still cold be, if Woody took himself out of the decision making process. Given what an attention whore he is though, that's unlikely.

The other issue, related to bad ownership, is a lack of team identity. ever since Werblin, Ewbank, and Namath left, the team renounced their high flying AFL, cocky persona, and tried to adopt the "acceptable" NFL style. They've been floundering ever since. Hire a proven offensive minded HC. Focus on drafting acquiring top offensive talent, starting with building the best OL they can. If Rodgers stays and remains healthy, they can get at least 1 more and maybe 2 more years of top QB play, enabling them to acquire his replacement and allow him to sit and learn - note I said acquire, meaning, not necessarily drafting someone, but getting someone young with the right skill set to be successful who might be on another team right now. This is their "best case" formula, with the quickest payoff.

But more than likely Woody will want to get his hands in things and screw it up.

 

Agree with all of this. The Giants are the establishment, mainstream, traditional, "ground and pound + defense" NY team. Jets should go back to the iconoclastic, swashbuckling style of the Namath era, the alternative to the staid Giants. That would provide narrative structure and a franchise identity.

Regarding Hess, yes he was a bad owner too, until Parcells, reflected in the lack of on field success generally of those years, with very brief exceptions (e.g. 81/82 Sack Exchange, 86 KOB year) and even those, they couldn't get over the finish line.

 

You would still think that some of the good organizations aura would rub off on him. Douglas was with the Ravens for 14 years, it’s not like it was a quick stop.

 

There has to be at least one maintenance guy who's been in the Ravens building for 14 years. Wouldn't want to hire him for GM (though at this point, might as well).

 

Yeah but case in point here; why are we such whack jobs about reporting injuries and mishandling them? The Ravens and Eagles don’t do that shit. Yet that still seemed to start when Douglas got here.

 

Douglas wasn't calling the shots on the Ravens or Eagles, so the way he handles injuries didn't affect them. Here he calls the shots, so now we see how he handles injuries.