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Peyton Manning out, Joe Douglas the favorite, and other Jets general manager rumors

Fanatics Super Bowl Party - Arrivals Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images for Fanatics

A number of NFL and team insiders weighed in with rumors about the Jets’ general manager search today.

  • By most accounts, Joe Douglas is the Jets’ preferred candidate as the search begins. I think hiring a respected professional like Douglas would be a positive development and perhaps the first step on the road back to respectability for this franchise. At this time Douglas’ interest level is unclear. There are obvious positives and negatives about this opening, but this is a smart guy to target.
  • Ian Rapoport’s statement that the general manager will be given final say over the 53 man roster is another positive development. It is necessarily to give the general manager this control, but I think this alone is not sufficient. I firmly believe the next general manager needs to be empowered to take total control over football operations, and the Johnson brothers need to remove themselves.
  • Both Rapoport and Adam Schefter say Peyton Manning will not be the team’s next general manager. A Manning hiring would be difficult for me to rationalize. This job seems too big for a total blank slate, and Manning’s biggest asset is name recognition. I’m not against outside the box thinking. Nor do I think Manning needs to start as an entry level junior scout if he wants to pursue a front office career. With that said, I can’t imagine hiring Peyton Manning as a general manager at this point would be anything more than a publicity stunt. Almost all of the heavy lifting of the job would likely have to be delegated to somebody else. If Peyton Manning wants to be a general manager, he would be best served getting a lower profile job in a front office rather than starting at the top. History has shown us that being a great player does not necessarily translate to the front office.

Adam Gase also spoke to the press today. He denied any claim that he has increased his power within the organization.

In other news, Adam Gase is one of the leading voices in the search for a new general manager.