Is Woody Johnson Getting Impatient With The Jets’ Performance?

If you watched last night’s game, you might remember a point in the fourth quarter when the ESPN broadcast team referenced an Adam Schefter segment on Sportscenter where the NFL insider said Jets owner Woody Johnson was upset at the team’s performance. This was before the team had another rough day at the office against the Cardinals.

You can view the segment by clicking here.

Schefter notes people around Johnson are stating he is, “"noticeably upset, disappointed and angry.” There isn’t anything concrete to suggest Johnson is looking at making major changes to the people running the team outside of what Schefter terms the owner’s “unpredictable” nature.

The Monday Night Football broadcast crew definitely seemed to oversell how ominous things look for Todd Bowles and perhaps Mike Maccagnan. The way they discussed Schefter’s words made it sound like a change was on the table. Maybe it is. Maybe it will be, but Schefter’s segment is much softer than was reported during the game.

I do think it is fair to say Woody is unpredictable so this season will be something of a test for him.

I am not saying he should be satisfied with the result. I am also not saying anybody within the hierarchy of this team is doing a good job.

Woody Johnson cannot pull the plug on this regime after two years, however. I’m not sure any result on the field could change my mind on that one.

We knew going in that this was a major rebuilding project. Yeah, the Jets tried to put a competitive team on the field. They had to spend. They were up against the salary floor.

The fact of the matter is this regime inherited a roster that had virtually no talent. The first two years were really window dressing no matter what happened. This has always been about finding a base of young impact talent that would emerge in 2017, 2018, and 2019. You can’t build a winner exclusively through free agency. Free agents are too expensive to have a good one at every position in a league with a hard salary cap. We have seen the upper limits of what a team built through free agency can do a year ago. It still will have holes.

This is not saying, “Everything is fine,” or, “These guys just need time, and they’ll be great.” There are no guarantees staying the course will produce good results.

Making wholesale changes every two years is, however, a virtual guarantee that you will not have good results. Quick changes need to be the exception, not the rule. The Jets just fired their last general manager after two seasons.

I know it might be difficult to hear, but the 2015 free agent class was a distraction from the reality that this team is currently in a rebuilding process. It is about hopefully finding and developing the talent that can make the Jets one of the best teams in the league for the long run.

Will it work? I have no idea, but Woody knew going in (or at least should have known) that this was a major rebuilding project. If you aren’t going to give these guys four years to allow them to see a few Draft classes through to maturity, what was the point of hiring them in the first place?