Jets Tumbling in a Downward Spiral After Firing GM Mike Maccagnan

Eighteen days after the end of the NFL draft, the Jets have moved on from GM Mike Maccagnan, putting the Jets into an increasingly deeper mess with no easy way out.

Were you mad about being lied to?

Was it the fact that just three days ago Adam Gase talked about how “pissed off” he was having to deal with these rumors of internal discord because everything being reported was just drivel for clicks?

Were you mad about the lack of oversight? That an owner in residence, with access to more sound business advice than a presidential advisory panel, decided to let his hanging-by-a-thread general manager spend fistfuls of money in a last-ditch effort to save his job without for a second wondering if this might be a bad idea (by the way, that general manager spent about as much on a per-year basis on C.J. Mosley as the Panthers are spending on Cam Newton)?

Were you mad about the fact that, now there seems to be a whole bunch of players on the roster that don’t feel wanted by the current coaching staff who, in an effort to gain power inside the building, toppled the general manager and his head of personnel after completing one of the most significant roster overhauls over the last two years in recent franchise history? How is that going to play with Le’Veon Bell, who is reading the news today that Gase didn’t think he was worth that much money and got mad enough at Mike Maccagnan to get him fired? This is a running back who skipped an entire season over a contract dispute.

Were you mad about the fact that your team looks stupid again?

Pay attention because this moves fast: The outrage will quickly subside and you’ll be sold a bill of goods about the next person brought in—that this person is smart and pragmatic and savvy—when really, this person just gets along better with the people who won the power struggle. If you’re mad, stay mad for a minute.

This is the NFL. It costs about as much to take your family to a game as it does to fly to Cancun and spend a week on the beach. Instead, you spend your money on a team—and largely a sport—that operates via a cycle of organizational lunacy that is so vulnerable and asinine that the one franchise opting to think differently has been able to dominate the sport for nearly two decades unchecked (a team that so happens to share a division with the Jets).

Here’s the battle plan that should feel so familiar now: Hire a GM and a coach, empower them until they fail, listen to either the GM or the coach about why it’s the other guy’s fault and fire one of them. Hire another person who comes in and convinces you that the guy who you kept in the first place should also go after one year, and that really, what the team needs is a guy I’m friends with who won’t challenge me and let me do things my way.

How do you get off the cycle? Demand someone who spends more time in the building. Demand someone who talks to the employees. Demand someone who doesn’t dismiss reports of internal discord as drivel-for-clicks just because the head coach does. Chances are, someone in your building leaked it for a reason.

Or not, because the bet is that you’ll keep spending Cancun prices, keep drinking seven dollar beers to watch a team perpetually spinning treadless into nothing. It’s easier for teams to operate that way. Most do. And that should make you mad.

Question or comment? Email us at talkback@themmqb.com.