How Do New York #Jets FIX Their Roster? (BADLANDS)

How Do New York #Jets FIX Their Roster? (BADLANDS)

What’s up, War Room? Welcome back. Pre-London Q&A. Got a ton of questions. We’re going to try to rip through as many as we can. CR fresh recording. Fresh off recording. A nice 36 37 minute pod about our woes around our own five team. How we feeling? Hockeyy’s back. I see the shirt opener tonight. Yeah, hockeyy’s back. My sad sports fandom existence is really, you know, go through this almost every year with the Jets. Um, the Knicks are really entertaining now. That’s been Knicks. I’m excited. that has been a a a light of hope and then you wake up and you’re hearing like oh the Knicks are the only team Giannis was considering this summer. It’s like don’t don’t get my hopes up. But the Rangers have been the one team that actually give me and I know they’ve come up short in two Eastern Conference Finals. But those are like happy playoff moments for me. It’s the bar is very very low. This was a disappointing Mets year. So yeah, hockeyy’s back. Thank god. I also just love the sport. It’s oddly one of the sports that I could I could truly watch any game of hockey, but um here we go, man. It’s going to be some kind of week here for our New York Jets. A lot of the boys going out to London, which is pretty sick. I’m I’m pumped for you guys. It’s going to be a great trip. And you know, we need a real show me something kind of week here for the Jets. Little fight. Little fight. Aaron Glenn, you’ve wanted this job your whole life. Angry. I mean, the self-ride, everything. Maybe some kind of trick up the sleeve. You almost wonder and I’m very capable of talking myself into things. It’s what you have to do. Like when you podcast about a team, you you can’t sit here every day and record for 3 minutes and say everything’s hopeless. You almost wonder if this team needs to get away as far as possible. It kind of feels like it where being home right now is one of the worst things for them, which you know, once again, that stadium is just not a a competitive advantage, which is You don’t think Jets Panthers is going to be an electric crowd? Right. Exactly. And the problem is that the Jets schedule this year has also been very prone to uh big national fan bases early like the Steelers and the Cowboys that credit to those fan bases. They buy up tickets for away games all the time. They have fans everywhere and their fans travel and you know the Jets are kind of looked at as a doormat. So, a lot of those fans would love to go see I look at it like if I was going away to watch the Mets play some one or maybe even better contacts context than Knicks or the Rangers. Like I’d also like to do a trip not only somewhere nice but a team that I think they’re going to beat because you’re traveling all the way to see them there. So yeah, so it just the bottom line is especially against Denver, it feels like the Jets being as far away as possible and isolated is actually a good thing. Yes, I concur. All right, JP Waxer. Seriously, what do you think Woody has been chirping at Aaron Glenn since 400 p.m. on Sunday? He’s got to be sticking his nose in. No. Well, definitely. I think so. I think it got bad enough in that game where some conversations are being had. I think if it gets really bad in London, we know how Woody feels about London, some conversations will be had. I don’t, you know, in terms of like meddling, I don’t know if we’re back to some of the stuff we were hearing last year because to be fair, it was very late in Salin Douglas’s tenure. I will say I was I was still kind of surprised that Woody did fire them mid year. He was not a mid-year fire guy and then he just like midyear fired everyone over this course of like 12 days. Uh I don’t think that’s, you know, that means anything for what he’s going to do with Aaron Glenn. I do agree with the analysis. I don’t think it has anything to do with money. I just think they’re going to give Glenn at least two full years. And I think due to that they’ll end up giving Muji two full years. And I I am sure they’re having some difficult conversations. they should be having some difficult conversations with how bad the first five games have been. What I certainly hope and then I’ll let you answer as well is that Glenn is talking to and being challenged by more people than Tony Dunie and Bill Parcels. Some younger people, some people with a different POV, someone who’s going to have a hard conversation with him about the reality of this situation to have him approach things differently the next five games than he did the first five games because people can learn on the job. people can evolve and get better and maybe this league truly humbled him to a different extent that it never has before and he’s gonna try some different things in the next five games because he’s wanted this job his whole life and he doesn’t want to be remembered as Lou Holtz Rich Kotite and Adam Gase which I no one wants him remembered as that. Nobody does. I hope that he shuts us all up and he is the guy who breaks a playoff drought 2, three years from now. With all this criticism, we all look insane for being this critical after five games. But until I see a win, it’s hard to get there. What do you think, Sar? Well, yeah. Well, when it comes to Woody, yeah, I’d love to know what questions he’s asking. And I would imagine, you know, this is obviously an organization like most that they they read a lot of different stuff, so listen to a lot of different stuff. listen to things. Yeah. Would I be shocked if it the question is asked like why do you keep playing Michael Clemens every week? And the answer is probably like, well, we don’t we’re dealing with Germaine Johnson being hurt and we have injuries. And you know, I think really the the issue at hand that we’ve often said is cuz what do you watch is the approach that coaches take and GL they probably loved that when they hired Glenn they were getting that drill sergeant hard ass, but the problem is when you get worse results than the previous guy so far, there’s a lot of season left. Yep. the team might be like, well, why are we getting yelled at or worked harder for more embarrassing results? And they to tune out that message. So, that’s something that like they’ll be monitoring for sure is how the message is received by the team, what the vibe of the team is around. You know, the Jets are a weird organization, though, because I I don’t really ever get the vibe that, you know, Woody’s the kind of guy that has player relationships or anything because they don’t they don’t have a franchise quarterback either, right? If they had a franchise quarterback, that’s an area where a owner and a player can have a conversation. And Jets have a lot of weird leadership dynamics, honestly, that we don’t have to get into today. But the problem is it’s broken and flawed. I do think Glenn and Woody have a much stronger relationship than Salah and Woody ever had where they’re definitely communicating week by week. Yeah. But like what is GL what is Glenn going to say right now? I’m sure Glenn is mostly bringing up examples from Detroit course which you know that’s what a lot of guys typically do. they they go back to different rebuilds and um yeah, it’s a tough one to answer because you know it like what is what can you really say right now? I I do think the London games though matter. I’ve heard they matter a lot to Woody because of all his contacts and connections out there and you got to realize those contacts and connections aren’t locked into the Jets every week. So when the Jets come out there that’s their like look at the Jets. So the results of that game matters a lot where man in a week where we we expect them to have a stinker. It’s a bad week if they have a stinker. Yes. All right. From Philip 07, where did this all go wrong? Was it not firing Rex and Idzy? Uh was it Anthony Bar saying no to the Jets and then pivoting to signing Mosley? Was it the Gase hire, the Salah hire failing Sam? Where did this losing really start? Better question, how do we get it to stop? And I I did I get a quick answer in text. We always say the Badlands origin story is when they didn’t fire Tanabomb and Rex concurrently and they started with the half measure that backed them into hiring and everything out for a while. Everything kind of went downstream from that. Now, that’s not an excuse to miss the playoffs for 15 years. Maybe it’s an excuse to miss the playoffs for like five years, but there’s a couple landmarks along the way. That’s one of them. Um, and a lot of this goes back to our original docue series. Um the process and the gase hire ultimately is another thing to point to. There’s a lot of Sam chatter and I what I’ll say is that it’s easy to remember that or easy to forget I think that Sam got got to go to school with Okonnell and Shanahan and I think that did him wonders and I don’t think he was getting that education here. So certainly in hindsight you would approach that situation differently but it’s one among many big mistakes. Another one that always sticks out to me and obviously we know what ultimately happened in the end. So they should have taken a quarterback instead of a safety in the first round. Uh Watson and Mahomes were viable options. They thought Hackenberg and Penny were future options when they clearly weren’t. How do you get it to stop? You draft a franchise quarterback like Washington did or like Houston did. Um, or you you have multiple drafts at other positions and you find a way to acquire a veteran quarterback who has uh Rich Ganon, Vinnie Testaverdie, Baker Mayfield, now Sam Darnold type resurgence for a few years. Well, like Goth has done for the Lions, right? The Jets are either going to get their quarterback one of two ways. They’re gonna we’re going to spend so much time talking about this and I I’m sure it’s something you’re thinking about all the time. They’re either going to draft the right quarterback next year or depending on where they end up landing. They’re going to go aggressively try to acquire a veteran. Who that veteran is I can’t tell you yet. Just promise me it won’t be Kyler Murray. Um but that will come at some point. And you know, can you get that right paired with having one of those off seasons? And the Jets, like if you’re just talking about short-term winning, which this organization may really need right now just to like get the monkey off the back, they had an off season where they got Brandon Marshall to pair with Eric Decker, who they got the year before, and they had a really good team that could have made noise in the playoffs if they got in for like 18 months. They’ve had drafts where they drafted Dria Shaw Ferguson and Nick Mangold and Leon Washington and Brad Smith and Eric Smith. You need that kind of draft. And this is how the Lions got there. We were looking at this in our group chat. The Lions on day three drafted St. Brown to play receiver. That’s why we say day three picks matter. You could draft St. Brown or you could draft Arian Smith and Tyler Baron. You want the Lions turnaround, draft St. Brown. Draft Brian Branch Barnes, too. Yeah. Draft Brian Branch and Leaporta in the second round, not just one good player. Nail all your first round picks and then find some other guys on day three and round it out and do player development. That’s the only way it stops. There’s no miracle answer. Look, maybe maybe finally the Jets will pick first, second, or third next year, and they’ll pick the right quarterback out of the seven, eight, nine guys we’re going to talk about. What do you think, CR? Well, I think that was really well said by you is that it’s where did it go wrong is such a fascinating question, and you and I have tried to tried to solve this multiple times. We’ve done, you know, docu series and all different kinds of stuff. I think that the Sam one is is a good call out by you because there’s always the crowd there that thinks and yes the in hindsight the right move and I was wrong about this would have been to keep him and take one of the best players in that draft right who knows if they would have got it right odds are they probably would have because all the guys taken in the top like Penn Su Jamar Chase you know Michael Parsons it was just crazy that draft and then try to figure it out from there. But I I never believed Sam was going to figure it out here. He was so uh engulfed in everything wrong here and they never had the right staff around him and he kind of fell into the the bottomless pit of it as well. And then yeah, he went and run once again like behind the scenes the school of Shanahan for a year, Okonnell and now Kubak’s a nice fit for him as well. I mean, it’s not like Sam is just like Seattle’s a nice infrastructure right now with what Mike McDonald’s doing over there. That’s what we wish the Jets were. Yeah. A defensive coach with some energy, really smart, hired the right offensive coordinator, and they’re kind of they kind of built their rebuilt their roster the right way. I think that the overall point you made though is right. It it’s there isn’t a moment, right? There’s no moment where it’s not like the Jets, although this narrative feels weird now, but it’s not like when you the Panthers felt like after year one when they took Bryce Young over CJ Strad, right? And Straoud’s had his ups and downs since, but after that year, you were like, “Oh my god, what have we done?” The Jets don’t have a moment really as obvious as that. It feels like um because it feels like when they do take a quarterback, a lot of it is like ah that wouldn’t have worked out here in that situation. But I guess you bring up the Jamal Adams year. Okay, that would have been an interesting one for sure. But it feels like it is just absolutely a builtup problem of the reality is with the NFL because this is a thought, this is a big combo about around college football, which I do a lot more of now doing Big 10 Saturdays and doing Notre Dame pregame. Like the big cliche you always hear around college football is if you have the better players, there’s a good chance you’re going to win. And honestly, a lot of the times that’s right in college football. You don’t really hear people say that in the NFL because there in a league as competitive and difficult and fast and strong as the NFL there is a lot of like development matters a lot and strategy matters a lot but how much combo we have around that almost overshadows that you also need the good players. Yeah. And the reality is for the Jets they don’t often draft the right players. They don’t often sign the right players. And the two go hand in hand of, you know, we drafted the wrong guy, so then we over spent here on this guy to fix the mistake and it kind of puts you or traded and it puts you in this endless spin. And that to me is the like the meat and potatoes of football is team building and roster building. Something I’m obsessed with doing the draft year round. And I just think the Jets have been so bad at it for so long. And the reason this is the easiest argument to make is look at the last two great periods of the organization. The team that Bill Parcell’s built and the team that Eric Manini built for Rex. And Rex gets a lot of credit because he coached that team and did a lot of great things with those pieces. Yep. But Eric Manini’s drafts stand in a league of their own compared to the 15 plus years after that. So I I think at the end of the day when you have a talented and I think the Jets when they got Aaron Rodgers got a little overrated in a couple areas. They had a good roster but I think and we fell victim to this. People were like oh Aaron Rogers this year like the Jets are just going to run over everybody. They still had shortcomings in other areas but Douglas drafted better than McCagnon. There’s no denying that. He just had the topheavy drafts. he knew how to draft with the premium assets for the most part. It was after that that was the problem. But yeah, that’s it to me is just like they need somebody in that building that knows how to find players. Yep. And it has been a long long time since they’ve had that guy. And honestly, that was the end of Rex. The end of Rex was that he didn’t have somebody in the building that can find him players. And until the Jets have that guy, and here’s a spoiler, I don’t believe they have that guy right now. And I think people are not really happy with my tone lately at the GM. Uh but I like do you want me to lie until I see otherwise? And I hope he proves me wrong. I hope Muji drafts four pros in the next draft and I will tip my cap. I still don’t think the Jets have that guy because having that guy isn’t just that guy logs on on draft night and does. It’s the guy that can lead a room of people that have built up to that moment to scout around the country. And the Jets don’t have that infrastructure and they don’t have the guy at the top of it either. It’s not there. You need good players to win in the NFL and like it’s hard enough as it is, man. Yeah. Until we get back in the business of drafting David Harris in the second round and drafting Derell Rivas in the first round and finding players like Leon Washington and Brad Smith and Jericho Cotry and Leverius Kohl’s on day three. That’s how you make the playoffs. Next one from Jay Mullins. If we were to move on from AG, which I don’t agree with, who do we even get? I’m old enough to remember when the media was clamoring over guys like Zack Robinson and Slovic as potential head coaches and they’ve fallen on their faces once they left McVey and Shanahan. Same with Mike McDaniel in Miami. The culture here is absolutely trash and personally think completely new regimes may not solve anything. It could just make it worse if you go one and done. It’s a there’s not a perfect answer. If the Jets are in a situation where they’re going one and done, that means they went two and 15, 1 and 16, or 0 and 17 and were wholly uncompetitive in 95% of their games. And the damn breaks with leaks and something happens and I think it will be so obvious that they have to move on. It won’t actually be held against them that they go one and done because it will just be so self-evident, I would think. Um, yeah, one more part. There also is a part two. I think they would only do it if the most obvious was out there, right? Ravens get uh jumpy Stfansky. Yeah, because think about it like I I agree with what you said and I didn’t want to cut you off, but I don’t think it’s Yeah, all those things could happen and you might have to. I really think they don’t want to go one and done no matter what. I think even if they win two games, they’re really going to try to convince themselves like, “No, let’s give it time. We don’t want Woody doesn’t want that reputation. I understand a lot of not wanting to be one and done. Nobody I hope the Jets win a more games. So then we’re not having this combo. But right now we’re having the combo. But man, like if you’re if you won one or two games, you’re picking number one overall. There’s a quarterback in the draft that people are talking about and your choice is, oh, Kevin Stfansky is going to be responsible for his development or this staff with everything we just saw is. Yeah, that’s that’s a no-brainer. I think in that situation that’s how it has that’s the way it all comes to it takes forces from every side of the room for something to be that nuclear in my opinion. Yeah. It’s not just going to be for like the next OC that everyone’s excited about. No, that would be ridiculous. Yeah, I agree. Um All right.

Joe and Connor answer all of your Discord questions on ownership meddling, Justin Fields analysis, Isaiah Davis, trade deadline predictions, NFL Draft management and where the genesis of the Jets playoff drought started…

FULL episode at www.patreon.com/BadlandsTOJ