Jets get the worst news for their offseason before they were done playing their last game
For fans of the New York Jets, this time of year is always bittersweet. Another failed year despite lofty expectations. One last Sunday where you have to watch your team flounder and wonder if it is okay to want to watch them win, even know your brain tells you it is better at this point […]
For fans of the New York Jets, this time of year is always bittersweet. Another failed year despite lofty expectations. One last Sunday where you have to watch your team flounder and wonder if it is okay to want to watch them win, even know your brain tells you it is better at this point to watch them lose.
The season is mercifully coming to an end, freeing up your Sundays to be happy again, and not have to endure the pain of watching another week of New York Jets football. And when the season ends, that little seed of hope in the bottom of your hearts and the back of your minds begins to take root as the Jets embark on another offseason full of promise. And this offseason isn’t going to just be a few small tweaks. This is going to be a whole new crop of hope.
Many Jets fans, who just weeks ago promised they were “done with this team for good” will catch wind of a certain coach who may be interested in the Jets job, or a player who would “love to be back”. And that same person who swore off the team will find themselves right back in this unhealthy relationship.
The Jets spent Friday of this past week meeting with Mike Vrabel, far and away the most prized head coaching candidate readily available this offseason. By all accounts, the meeting went well on both sides. It looked like the Jets were going to make a good hire.
The Jets were beating the Miami Dolphins at halftime in a must-win game for Miami and things looked like they were going to turn around. And then the Jets got a hard dose of reality.
The New England Patriots fired their head coach, Jarod Mayo after only one season as Bill Belichick’s successor and with it came the realization that Mike Vrabel was likely headed back to the team of his playing days to be their new head coach.
It isn’t set in stone that Vrabel will head back to New England, but it certainly seems that way. In some ways, it is a better job than the Jets. For starters, their owner is one of the best in football, while the Jets have Woody Johnson. The Patriots also have a quarterback in Drake Maye who looks every bit the part of a franchise quarterback. The rest of the Patriots’ roster is pretty terrible, but they have the fourth overall pick in the draft and about $130 million in cap space to rectify that.
The Jets meanwhile can offer Vrabel his choice of general managers to work with and a roster who, for the most part, has a lot of foundational pieces.
Still, the familiarity with the organization as well as the opportunity to not work with Woody Johnson feels like enough to sway Vrabel further North in his job choice. And I have to hand it to Vrabel if that is ultimately the way he chooses to go. He did what Kirk Cousins and Tyreek Hill did in the past and used the Jets as leverage to get what he wanted from the destination he wanted. He dangled the boogey-man Jets out there in the media to spur Robert Kraft into action and fire Mayo clearing the way for Vrabel to go back to New England.
At this point the Jets have become nothing more than a negotiation tool for players that want to sign elsewhere. Kirk Cousins always wanted to go to the Minnesota Vikings back in 2018 and used the Jets to drive up the price. Even though the Jets offered more money to Cousins, he got enough from Minnesota to sign there after the Vikings were forced to up their offer. In 2022 Tyreek Hill let it leak that the Jets were deep in trade talks to get him from the Kansas City Chiefs only to drive up the price so the Miami Dolphins could swoop in and get him. I even have a conspiracy theory that Aaron Rodgers was trying to use the same tactic, and the other team didn’t bite, forcing his hand to the Jets.
Mike Vrabel is likely taking a page right out of their book and it’s working like gang busters.
As more and more names are pouring in for potential new head coaches for the New York Jets, I must admit that outside of Vrabel, none of them make me very excited for the future. Everyone will have their favorite, but there isn’t a proven winner on the list outside of Vrabel and it will just be another crap shoot. And the Jets have already lost too much money at the table.
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