Just hours after Woody Johnson officially fired GM Joe Douglas, a move that was sure to happen at the end of the season anyway, The Athletic released an article titled “Why Joe Douglas never stood a chance as Jets GM”. In the piece, Zack Rosenblatt and Dianna Russini detail a bunch of actions Woody Johnson did over the past year to handcuff, undermine or otherwise hamper Douglas’ ability to be an effective GM.

While it was already known that Woody Johnson unilaterally fired head coach Robert Saleh without consulting his GM, some of the other accusations in the piece range from shocking, to laughable, to puzzling. Woody tried to force the Jets to bench Aaron Rodgers four games into the season. He demanded that the Jets bench safety Tony Adams. He forced the trade for Davante Adams. Sabotaged an extension for Bryce Huff and a trade for Jerry Jeudy and forced the team to sign Mike Williams and Tyron Smith.

All these lead to three very real and terrifying conclusions for Jets fans.

1. Woody Johnson is much more involved than he would have you think in the day-to-day operation of the football team.

There are different types of bad owners in sports. Some would argue that one type is worse than another type, but they all have their setbacks. There are owners who are out to save as much money as they can. There are also owners who don’t care about the success of their teams as long as the checks keep coming in. Woody is clearly neither of those.

Woody cares deeply about winning and is not afraid to spend money to make it happen. But Woody is a micromanager. He is involved in decisions he has no business being involved in. He is there to run the business side of the franchise, make high level hirings, keep the organization running and collect his checks. He should not be involved in who starts at the free safety spot. Especially when…

2. Woody Johnson knows nothing about football.

Woody Johnson is a businessman, not a football mind. He clearly knows how to run a business that is made to generate revenue. That means absolutely nothing on a football field. He doesn’t understand the nuances of the game any more than I understand the intricacies of building a circuit board (spoiler: I have no clue).

Woody Johnson is the type of owner who gives the loudest fans what they want because he hears and reads everything. Frankly, fans don’t know anything either. If it were up to many in Pittsburgh, the Steelers would have fired Mike Tomlin a long time ago. Woody is out to make the biggest splash so he can be praised. That’s not how football works.

You can blame a bad year on a quarterback. You can blame a bad few years on a coach. You can blame a bunch of bad years on a GM. 14 seasons of being bad is on ownership. It’s on Woody Johnson.

He clearly believes that he knows best and refuses to hire a football mind and let them work unimpeded for a few seasons before deciding on how good of a job they did.

3. It is going to be hard to bring in a new general manager to work under these conditions.

When the dust settles on this season and the Jets begin interviewing for a new GM, it is going to be hard to ignore these reports of Woody Johnson’s involvement in the operation of this franchise. Woody is an egomaniacal madman who will fire a head coach five games into a season without consulting the person he hired to make those decisions. That is after he tries to force his head coach to bench his future Hall of Fame quarterback after four games.

For the record, I’m not defending Robert Saleh or Joe Douglas. They both were not up to the task of getting this team into the postseason. But there is a way things need to be done, and Woody Johnson simply ignores them based on his belief that he knows more than the people he hired to make decisions.

Why would anyone with better options available to them chose to work in this environment if they could get a job elsewhere? Because the Jets have Sauce Gardner and Garrett Wilson? That wouldn’t be enough for me.

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