Jets’ Searches Appear To Be Conducted By Agenda-Driven Firm

Exhaustive Interview List Includes Possible Favors, Future Prospects

Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

On one hand, Jets fans should feel relieved that the team has outsourced its search for its vacant General Manager and Head Coach positions. Woody Johnson may have owned this franchise for the last 25 years, but from his words and actions, he doesn’t seem to know all that much about his product, only how to milk as much money as he can from his customers.

Johnson wasn’t even around the last time his organization underwent such a revamping, as he was fopping around the United Kingdom as the U.S. Ambassador during the first Donald Trump administration. Woody’s brother Christopher green lit GM Joe Douglas and HCs Adam Gase and Robert Saleh.

With the Douglas hiring in 2019, Christopher Johnson did not go with a search firm, relying on the wisdom of business chief Hymie Elhai and Gase for feedback, possibly because the prior two outside firms landed on John Idzik and Mike Maccagnan. No bueno. The Maccagnan hire reeked from the likely massaging of his credentials by Charley Casserly, Maccagnan’s mentor from their Houston days who led that search. Johnson was then allegedly persuaded by Peyton Manning into the Gase debacle while Douglas was intimately involved in picking Saleh, so no outsiders were engaged.

In other words, the Johnson’s have a history of getting it wrong when they go with their gut and getting it wrong when they trust other’s agenda-driven opinions. It’s quite a record.

Which brings us to today, where a firm named The 33^rd Team is leading the charge in bringing candidates to Woody Johnson for interviews. Strange name. Is it because there are 32 teams in the league and they would finish last? In any event, The 33^rd Team’s two principals involved here are Mike Tannenbaum, who was the Jets GM from 2006-2012, and former Vikings executive Rick Spielman.

They are running an exhaustive search. Almost too exhaustive. The Jets officially announced that they have already met with six GM and four HC candidates and I’ve lost track as to the number of people currently employed by other teams for whom they requested permission to interview. The HC to-do list is in double digits. With a few notable exceptions—offensive coordinators Ben Johnson (Lions), Todd Monken (Ravens), and Kliff Kingsbury (Commanders), probably because they preemptively made it known that they want no part of the Jets’ dysfunction—virtually anyone with an NFL coaching yen will be heading out to One Jets Drive in the near term, or at least meeting through Zoom.

Does Johnson need to see all these people? He doesn’t come across as the brightest bulb, so I can imagine him having difficulty distinguishing between candidates as the interviews run into each other. Or is this so The 33^rd Team can build their files in their proprietary portfolio for future gigs? Josh McCown? Wasn’t the former Jets quarterback coaching high school football until two years ago when the Panthers brought him in to be a QB coach? With McCown in the same role for Minnesota this season, the Jets reportedly requested an interview to be their 2025 HC, per ESPN.

The Rex Ryan affair is the most fishy. Ryan, who coached the Jets to back-to-back AFC Championship appearances in 2009-2010 with Tannenbaum on board, the last time New York qualified for the playoffs, hasn’t been on an NFL sideline since the Bills canned him nine years ago. The defensive-oriented Ryan’s conservative principles were outdated back them; how will he adjust to the modern game when he wouldn’t answer who he’d bring in to run his offense?

What a colossal waste of time. The Ryan interview screams cronyism, just like the news that Johnson will be meeting with Chris Spielman, a Lions “special assistant” who happens to be Rick’s brother, for the Jets GM job. Chris Spielman may have played a role in Detroit’s hiring of GM Brad Holmes and HC Dan Campbell, but that’s a long way from actually doing those jobs that resurrected that franchise from the dead into a Super Bowl contender. If the Jets were to restructure their organization chart to include a Team President for Football Operations above the GM/HC, then maybe interviewing Spielman would be appropriate. The Johnson’s, however, do not seem to have that kind of power surrender in mind, so what are we doing here?

By the way, there is a debate over how much credit Tannenbaum deserved for that short-lived Jets surge into contention. Many claim then HC Eric Mangini had the bigger hand in bringing in the core players whom Ryan took to the AFC title games; Tannenbaum, despite his penchant for self-promotion, was seen as more of a salary cap guy.

Now Tannenbaum, with his partner Spielman, might carry greater weight over the Jets’ future when you consider the malleability of the Johnson family. The more I read about the firm, the more I wonder why Jets fans should trust The 33^rd Team to fix their 26^th team.