It’s Time for Jets Owner Woody Johnson to Point the Finger At Himself

Public perception will make it harder for coaches and execs with options to take jobs with the team. Plus, why Daniel Jones was benched, fixing Caleb Williams, Drake Maye’s development and more in Albert Breer’s Tuesday notes.

Johnson fired Douglas after the general manager posted a 30-64 record in six years. / Chris Pedota, NorthJersey.com / USA TODAY NETWORK

It’s Tuesday, and we have more news to cover this week, including the Jets firing their general manager. So let’s not waste any time …

• The New York Jets became the first team I can remember to fire their coach and GM on separate occasions in-season.

Joe Douglas understood the deal going there, and I’m sure, at the end of the six-year deal he signed, knows a 30–64 record as GM exposed him to a day like this. The swing-and-miss on Zach Wilson in 2021, after failing to make things work with Sam Darnold, all of which was a prelude to the run at Aaron Rodgers, is a big reason why he was fired. These are high-level jobs, and Douglas lost twice as much as he won.

O.K., with that established, every failing boss should eventually get to the point where he’s pointed fingers in enough directions to necessitate one pointing right at the mirror. It’s time for Jets owner Woody Johnson to, finally, and once and for all, do that for his franchise.

Order Now. SIP December Total Athlete. Get Sports Illustrated's Total Athlete issue. dark

Too many people who’ve been through Florham Park over the past 25 years, even those who have had good relationships with Johnson, say the same things about him. He’s surrounded by too many nonfootball yes men. He listens to those people way too much on football matters, and too many people working there feel like they’re at the mercy of what’s being said about Johnson and his team on social media.

This, without question, will make it harder to get people with options to take jobs there. To lure Douglas from Philadelphia in 2019. the Jets had to put together a six-year, $20 million offer—an off-the-charts contract at the time for a first-time GM. And the murmurs on what goes on in that building, the problems that every football person who’s worked there seems to run into, certainly haven’t gotten any better in the five years since.

Money, to be sure, will help Johnson (whether it’s Woody or Christopher) fix the perception problem in landing his next coach and GM in January like it did in 2019. But it won’t fix the issues that have been foisted on people who’ve served in those roles for decades.

And, again, for Johnson, there’s a hard truth if he takes a hard look in the mirror. We’ll see whether he faces it this time around.

---

• Elsewhere in New Jersey, the New York Giants can’t say it, but business was, for sure, a major factor in the decision not just to bench Daniel Jones but relegate him to the third string (likely as a gameday inactive). He has a $23 million injury guarantee for 2025, and $12 million of it vests as fully guaranteed in March. Which means if he can’t pass a physical in March, the Giants would be on the hook for the $12 million, and if can’t pass a physical in September, they owe him all of it.

So bubble-wrapping him protects the team.

But there’s a very significant football element piece of this, too—and, as I see it, it goes to what looks, to other teams on tape, like a broken quarterback. And there were two prime examples from the game against the Carolina Panthers, Jones’s last start a couple weeks ago in London.

The first happened in the first quarter on New York’s fourth offensive snap. It was third-and-8, and Malik Nabers came wide open breaking back toward the ball on a sideline route. Jones airmailed it so far over Nabers’s head that the rookie, palms up after the play, didn’t even make an attempt to go up for it. A simple catch there, at the very least, would’ve put the Giants in position to kick a field goal, and probably would’ve gotten the first down.

The second came on a third-and-1 midway through the second quarter. The Giants called a fleaflicker. Wandale Robinson and Nabers came wide open as Devin Singletary flipped the ball back to Jones. Jones patted, stepped and took a sack, ending a possession that had gotten to midfield.

So if you saw Jones cost his team a field goal on the first one and a touchdown on the second, that’s 10 points off the board, and two punts added. The Giants lost, 20–17.

“He looks like he’s scared to pull the trigger,” says one NFC exec, in summing it up. Worse, the exec continued, is the impact it looks like it’s had on the rest of the team—with the frustration from the sideline apparent on the coaches’ film. On the fleaflicker, one coach can be seen jumping up and down. On others, multiple coaches visibly look upset. Players’ body language through this hasn’t been great, either.

That’s another reason why Brian Daboll had to bench Jones—to give his players something to believe in to try to build momentum going into 2025. Tommy DeVito isn’t great, and he’s certainly not as talented as Drew Lock, but the team knows he can run the offense, which should at least give the other 10 guys in the huddle a better chance to do their jobs.

Of course, this isn’t all on Jones, either. Part of the problem early in his career was that he was the sixth pick in the NFL draft, and more recently it’s been the $40 million-per-year tab the Giants are picking up that’s created expectations he can’t match. Yes, the offensive line is an issue, particularly since Andrew Thomas has been out, and the skill talent is still evolving, post-Saquon Barkley. But when you draft a quarterback that high, then pay him that much, the expectation is he should be able to work around things like that.

Jones hasn’t been nearly good enough to accomplish that.

“The offensive line has never been good around him, the skill players around him have been inconsistent, and I don’t know if he was ever the guy that could elevate an offense individually,” says an AFC exec. “But in a good offense he can be a good player. He was just put in a position where he had to elevate the offense.”

Which makes what followed, when you think about it, pretty predictable.

---

Williams had to learn coming into the pros that he couldn't hold the ball too long. / Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

• The final score notwithstanding, the Chicago Bears took a step forward with Caleb Williams in interim OC Thomas Brown’s first game as the play caller. And they did it in large part by tackling a bad habit of Williams’s head on.

One clear criticism of Williams coming out of USC was his propensity for holding the ball too long—an average of 3.3 seconds, snap-to-throw, which was near the top of the list among FBS quarterbacks in 2023—and in a way that wasn’t going to translate to the pros. Now, obviously, Lincoln Riley wasn’t designing plays that way. But there were cases where Williams would pass on receivers that may not have been quite open enough because he knew his ability to make a play off-schedule was the better option.

So what he had to learn coming in to the pros was, essentially, that holding the ball longer didn’t necessarily buy time for a play to get better. And through the first half of the season, Williams has had to learn that the hard way. His snap-to-throw average was nearly three seconds going into last week, meaning it didn’t improve much in a league that’s far less forgiving to an athletic quarterback doing that sort of thing.

It didn’t mean Williams couldn’t do it sometimes. He just couldn’t do it nearly as much as he had, with far more athletes on the field with the capacity to chase him down. He had to accept that the receiver being open by a step or two, in a lot of cases, was going to be his best option—and that going to his second or third read wasn’t necessarily going to bear a better result, and the chance to tuck the ball and run wasn’t always going to be there, either. He had to know, in other cases, that the patience to let his first read develop would pay off (there were instances where his first read was open, and his eyes were already somewhere else).

All that, of course, wasn’t going to be fixed in a week. The coaches knew, with the firing of Shane Waldron signaling it, that they had to do more to meet him halfway with the scheme. That manifested Sunday with Brown calling some designed runs, and screens and RPOs from the USC playoff to get the ball out of his hands and get him playing faster.

It worked, for sure. The Bears should’ve beaten the Green Bay Packers. It won’t work that well every week. But, for now, it gives Williams a better chance, and not just to play well individually, but also to avoid continuing to lose the faith of offensive linemen seeing sacks unfairly put on their ledger, and receivers doing their jobs, and not getting the ball on time.

From there, I think you have to be willing to take the rookie-quarterback lumps, if you’re the Bears, which is tougher because there are accomplished vets in that huddle, and a lot of folks with jobs on the line. No, Williams wasn’t quite as developed as you’d hoped coming out of college.

But there’s nothing the Bears can do about that now.

What they, and Brown specifically, did do last week was a good first step, as I see it, in getting Williams turned around.

---

• Since there’s been a lot of consternation over the New England Patriots’ coaching situation in Year 1 post-Bill Belichick, one of my television producers over at NBC Sports Boston asked for me to gather some opinions on the job OC Alex Van Pelt has done working with Drake Maye.

So I called a couple coaches who’ve faced the Patriots over the past couple weeks to ask. Their feedback may surprise you, and runs counter to some narratives out there.

“It’s similar to the Browns with Baker Mayfield and Jacoby Brissett—not as much what they were doing with Deshaun Watson,” said one defensive assistant. “Run the ball, a lot of quick game, and creating easy throws and quick reads for the quarterback. They’re running a lot of formations out of 12 personnel, and running, and running play-action out of that, with a good amount of empty to give Drake a clear picture and ways to get the ball out fast.

“The tight ends are solid, the backs are good, but the line and receivers aren’t good, which limits them. So AVP’s making it simple for the rookie.”

“AVP does a good job keeping the quarterback out of third-and-longs,” said a defensive coach from another recent Patriots opponent. “It’s not a complicated offense in terms of personnel groupings, motions or shifts, but I think once they improve the line and get the outside zone going, the quarterback will be much better, because of the boot and play action stuff. Their line struggles with outside zone because they lack athleticism. Drake is legit, he has all tools to be really good but he needs help at the skill positions.”

As for that lack of motions and shifts, the coach continued, “I mean, motion definitely puts more stress on the defense but it’s also more on the quarterback with the communication and timing. So I think keeping the picture clear for Drake helps. The juice ain’t worth the squeeze sometimes.”

Maye, for what it’s worth, just came off his best performance as a pro, and has progressively gotten better. So, as I see it, Van Pelt and his coaches deserve some credit for it.

---

Richardson spent more time on his preparation after getting benched a couple weeks ago. / Brad Penner-Imagn Images

• If there was a turning point for Indianapolis Colts quarterback Anthony Richardson that we look back on at the end of the year—and we’ll see on that—it might’ve come last Tuesday.

To be clear, it wasn’t that Richardson hadn’t been working hard previously. It was more so that he’d put in a solid day, and not go above and beyond. And in the NFL, at that position, if a player isn’t going above and beyond every week, he isn’t giving himself much of a chance.

By all accounts, Richardson was pissed over being benched a couple weeks ago. It lit a fire under him. And while the coaches had discussed doing extra, and staying later, to him over the two years before all this, having his job taken from him brought the reality of his situation into focus. He’d have to take that step forward, or put his career in peril.

Last Tuesday, he took the step forward. On the players’ day off, Richardson was camped out at the team facility. With the coaches in game-planning meetings all day, Richardson was around during their breaks, stopping by their offices to get a jump on where the gameplan was going, and how the Jets would defend him, and the Indy offense.

What’s my read on this run? What pass play do you like for this?

Richardson was locked in, and it showed on the field.

Postgame, Richardson talked about how calm he felt out there, which was a result of being a much more prepared quarterback. He got ready for the Jets as if to announce to everyone, I’m not giving this job back. And, now, the challenge becomes taking that approach every week.

But for now? The Colts feel pretty good about their quarterback.

---

• The scary thing about Monday for the Dallas Cowboys is the Houston Texans didn’t even play that well in their 34–10 victory.

Next up, they get a Washington Commanders team smarting from a tough loss to the Philadelphia Eagles with 10 days to prepare, then they have their Thanksgiving game against the Giants, the other NFC East team that’s already in play-out-the-string mode. Changes, of course, will almost certainly come after the season, with Mike McCarthy’s contract expiring.

But this, to me, is bigger than one coach. You’ve paid Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb, collectively, close to $100 million per year in new money on new contracts. You have another $40 million-per-year decision coming on Micah Parsons. There’s a first-round pick, in Tyler Guyton, at another premium position, and Trevon Diggs pulling down nearly $20 million per year at corner. So, in a lot of ways, you’re locked in with that core.

It’ll be interesting to see what they do to augment in 2025, as a team that’s generally not been real active in bringing in vets from other teams, either through free agency or trade.

---

• So we now have two coaches and a GM fired in-season. It’ll be interesting to see, going forward, if there’s any sort of domino effect—in that other teams feel the need to get their plans for next year going, and don’t want to hide the vetting of candidates they’re doing.

The Jacksonville Jaguars, of course, are the next obvious team to watch.

And this year’s coaching market should be interesting, with Bill Belichick, Mike Vrabel, Ben Johnson and Aaron Glenn among the candidates, which underscores how there are a lot of options in different categories (experienced head coach, offensive guru, beloved ex-player) looming for 2025.

---

More NFL on Sports Illustrated

feed