Jets GM Search: Why Aren't the Jets Interviewing Anybody Off the Ron Wolf Tree?

Over the past few years, Bill Parcells' coaching tree has become legendary. Three coaches who worked as assistants under Parcells, Bill Belichick, Tom Coughlin, and Sean Payton, have won the Super Bowl as head coaches.

If there is a front office equivalent of Parcells, it is probably Ron Wolf. In the past five years, two general managers whose career started working under Wolf, Ted Thompson and John Schneider, have been general managers on the Super Bowl winner. Another Wolf protege, John Dorsey, has been successful two years into his tenure as general manager of the Kansas City Chiefs. Yet another, Scot McCloughan, has received credit for assembling the talent on the 49ers and assisting Schneider in building the Seahawks into a champion. It hasn't all been successful. Reggie McKenzie in Oakland hasn't been a success story, but Wolf has an impressive record of training proteges for success in the NFL.

Wolf is working for the Jets as a consultant on their general manager search yet the interview process has yet to produce an interview with a Wolf protege (although they are seeking interviews with candidates who worked under Dorsey and Schneider). They still exist in the NFL. Wolf's son Eliot was just promoted yesterday by Green Bay into a prominent front office role for the second time in four years. Alonzo Highsmith is credited with finding Tramon Williams in Green Bay among others and has generated general manager buzz over the last few years. McCloughan is available although he did just leave a second organization is less than five years for personal reasons. It still might be worth speaking with him.

This isn't to say any of these Wolf proteges would be guaranteed to be quality general managers. It does seem odd that the Jets aren't at least speaking with these qualified candidates. If you hire Ron Wolf to play a big role in the search, why wouldn't you speak with accomplished personnel people who were trained at his knee?