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Let us quickly rewind to December 30th, 2018. To no one’s surprise, the Jets had decided to fire head coach Todd Bowles after 4 unsuccessful years. However, after weeks of rumors, the Jets retained Mike Maccagnan, the man who built the current roster, one that is seemingly void of high end talent. I think it’s safe to say that most fans on this publication have both praised the move to fire Todd Bowles, as well as criticized the move to retain Mike Maccagnan at some point over the past few months. The reasons behind why keeping Mike Maccagnan was a bad idea has been discussed on Gang Green Nation ad nauseam. I, too, think the Jets should have started completely fresh and hired a new dynamic duo at Head Coach and GM. However, we are stuck with Maccagnan for at least one more season, in what will be a very pivotal year for this franchise, with the enormous amount of cap space the Jets have.

With that being said, recent success of the Philadelphia Eagles should give us hope that the Jets were indeed right by trusting Maccagnan with approximately $100 million dollars and Sam Darnold’s future.

Why does the Eagles’ recent success give us hope as Jets fans? Let’s start by looking towards another pivotal day in recent NFL history: December 29th, 2015.

On December 29th, 2015, the Eagles fired Chip Kelly.

The Eagles decided to keep their General Manager, Howie Roseman. While during the 2015 season, Chip Kelly had usurped roster control from Roseman, the Eagles retained Roseman after the season and had given him back his General Manager responsibilities. Similar to Maccagnan, Roseman outlasted his coach, and was in charge of hiring a new coach. Much like the decision to keep Maccagnan, the move to keep Roseman was met with plenty of criticism.

Response to Keeping Howie Roseman:

Within a few days of the Chip Kelly firing, Bleeding Green Nation discussed the move to retain Howie Roseman in the following articles:

Chip Kelly Fired: Are the Eagles the new Browns?

Eagles Decision to put Howie Roseman back in charge and not hire a real general manager is very troubling.

The articles and comment sections provide several gems that are very eerily similar to what the Jets fanbase have been saying about the decision to keep Maccagnan:

This should have absolutely been a total house cleaning, but what this tells me is that Lurie values Roseman’s input to a surprising degree.

Any decent coaching candidate will be leery of Howie’s long knives.

If Lurie was truly, honestly intent on fixing the mess he’s created, he’d acknowledge that he committed more than one mistake here, do a clean sweep and start from scratch.

Keeping Roseman had no upside, if he was good enough to keep around he wouldn’t have been stripped of power, and while he wasn’t as bad of a GM as his detractors think he was, he also wasn’t good enough to keep around either.

Well the whole Roseman angle doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence and it reeks of mediocrity to come. I will gladly eat crow if I’m wrong, but without cleaning house, I can definitely see this becoming a coach and QB carousel. If Lurie and Roseman are big pals, and Roseman is as hard to get along with as it sounds, then this situation could get ugly. So long story short, no we are not the Browns…. yet. But right now, it would appear as if we are getting on a track that looks pretty bleak.

That’s the biggest thought I’ve had for the past 24 hours. This looks a lot like this will be a pattern. I really hope I’m flat out wrong here, but I don’t have faith in anyone in the FO to do what’s right or best for this organization. I just have a feeling Roseman will get someone who won’t challenge him and will take someone less.

It’s pretty crazy to me how the Eagles are trying to sell this move to the fans. Why isn’t there more outrage about this? You should be furious.

During his Wednesday press conference, Lurie said he wanted to hold Kelly accountable for his decisions. But for whatever reason, Roseman hasn’t really been held to the same standard during his tenure. The Eagles had problems before Kelly arrived, and despite being the team’s general manager since 2010, Roseman has never answered for them.

The lack of accountability in the Eagles organization could potentially scare some desirable head coaching candidates away. The fact that Roseman is part of the search counsel certainly doesn’t help matters.

For Eagles fans, this has to be one of the most annoying parts about Roseman sticking around. Lurie had the opportunity to clean house by removing Kelly and starting fresh with a new general manager (a REAL one) and a new head coach. This organization really could have benefited from external hires bringing in fresh perspectives. Instead, it’s more of the same.

A poll from the second article shows that out of 3715 readers, 90% of them were not confident in the power structure of Howie Roseman and Tom Donahoe.

The response for keeping Roseman was ultimately very negatively viewed by the fanbase at the time. However, what about the fan response of the Doug Pederson hiring?

Response to Hiring Doug Pederson:

Here are two articles that were posted on Bleeding Green Nation when Doug Pederson got hired:

Eagles Hire Doug Pederson: Do you approve of Philadelphia’s head coach selection?

Philadelphia Eagles Officially Hire Doug Pederson as Head Coach

These articles and their comment sections offer a similar sentiment that Gang Green Nation had when we hired Adam Gase:

This is obviously far from an exciting hire. Pederson’s name hadn’t really come up in any coaching searches prior to this offseason. He had never been interviewed by any other team than the Eagles. He’s not a “hot coordinator” by any means.

It’s not all positive. There are obvious concerns with Pederson. How much of Kansas City’s offensive success was really due to him? Andy Reid has been the one in charge for the most part. Reid has admitted to giving Pederson some play-calling responsibility in 2015, but that doesn’t qualify as extensive experience.

Got a bad feeling about this. Like the Eagles are about to waste 2 or 3 years on this potential bad hire.

So apparently the only strategy on the table was to go out and find the anti-Chip. Is there a place where big shots in suits can go to learn how to think?

A poll from the first article shows that out of 1914 readers, 81% of them did not want to hire Doug Pederson.

The State of the Eagles Roster leading into Roseman and Pederson’s first draft:

This article from Bleeding Green Nation discusses the needs of the roster: NFL Draft 2016: what is the Eagles’ biggest need?

The results from the poll shows that out of 852 readers, an overwhelming majority of them identified the offense to be the biggest weakness of the team. 34% of the readers thought Offensive line was the biggest need, followed by Running Back (33%) and QB (18%). Very few votes went towards the defensive side of the ball.

One glaring difference between the Eagles team and the Jets team at the time of that poll was the existence of a young Franchise QB, which we all know the Eagles ended up addressing that need by trading up for Carson Wentz.

The Jets addressed that need last year by trading up for Sam Darnold.

Now the Jets biggest remaining weaknesses are similar, with most fans on Gang Green Nation agreeing that Offensive Line, Running Back and Wide Receiver need to be aggressively addressed this offseason. The Jets can also add pass rusher to that list.

A look into how the Eagles addressed their needs to build a Super Bowl Winning Roster:

In Carson Wentz’s 2nd year, the 2017 season, the eventual Super Bowl Winning Eagles focused on getting their young QB weapons—-They signed Torrey Smith, Alshon Jeffery and LeGarrette Blount in free agency. They traded for Jay Ajayi at the trade deadline. They attempted to protect Wentz by signing Chance Warmack. They strengthened their defensive line by signing Chris Long and Timmy Jernigan.

What this means for the Jets--My thoughts and Conclusions:

The Jets are currently in a very similar situation that the Eagles were in when they decided to fire Chip Kelly and keep Howie Roseman. They had a roster full of holes, with many fans feeling like both Chip and Howie were responsible for the state that the Eagles were in. They decided to keep Roseman, and draft an offensive head coach that most of the fanbase did not approve of. They had plenty of needs on the offensive side of the ball. The Jets and Eagles were in very similar places. We can even say that the current day Jets might be ahead of the Eagles entering the 2016 offseason because we have already drafted our young franchise QB and have given him a year worth of valuable experience, while the Eagles had not yet drafted Carson Wentz.

The Eagles’ Super Bowl winning roster was built on strong offensive and defensive lines as well as focusing on surrounding their young passer with weapons.

The Jets should take the same approach. The Jets should prioritize improving both of their lines and pass rush. We don’t need to allocate all of our resources towards high priced weapons at the expense of building up our trenches. We should be focusing on building the trenches first and look into getting reliable weapons that Darnold can orchestrate the offense with.

There are plenty of reasons to hate the fact that the Jets kept Mike Maccagnan while firing Todd Bowles and signing Adam Gase. However, I won’t be surprised if in the next 2 seasons, the very GM and Coach we currently don’t want, are standing proud on the world’s biggest stage, hoisting the Lombardi Trophy. Sam Darnold, Jamal Adams as well as a further look into the Eagles’ recent success, and the similarities between the two franchises has provided me with that hope.