Mike Florio and Manish Mehta Do Mike Florio and Manish Mehta Things

His Florioness of ProFootballTalk had a garbage article today, so you know it's your regular Tuesday programming. In it, he quoted Manish Mehta by saying:

Manish Mehta of the New York Daily News reports that the Jets have apologized to at least one agent after the team misled the agent regarding the team’s interest in a player during the three-day exclusive negotiating window.

Multiple agents told Mehta the Jets engaged in "questionable practices" by leading them to believe the team’s interest was at a level that the eventual offers apparently didn’t match.

Florio went on to denounce the "dysfunctional" culture of the New York Jets based on Mehta's report. I have spoken to several of my own sources, including Mehta himself, who have confirmed that the complaints about Idzik's pace stems from one disgruntled employee. Presumably, this employee is a holdover from the Mike Tannenbaum Era and just isn't used to the more deliberate pace Idzik has shown.

But let's go back a step and think about what Florio quoted from Mehta. Is this actually a problem? Are these actually questionable practices?

Absolutely not.

Florio and Mehta are using this source to seemingly imply the Jets did something wrong, as if they were forced to give a high offer based on their initial level of interest. For comparison, let's say I pulled on a girl's pigtails in elementary school to signify to her that I had a crush on her. Later on, am I required to marry (give her an offer) her? Of course not. Let's be clear: John Idzik and his staff violated no rules and this would hardly constitute a breach of good faith. They were under zero obligation to provide a player with an offer that the player thought was appropriate.

As we have long known, this is merely a case of Florio and Mehta puffing up what's an isolated incident to be endemic in the franchise's front office. In some cases they are explicitly stating that they're extrapolating, and at others they're implying it. Either way, the only questionable tactics are their journalistic practices.