Mike Lupica: Time for Woody Johnson to step up and take ownership of this Jets mess

There are other laughingstock teams in professional sports, of course. The White Sox just lost more games than any baseball team in history. But it’s also worth remembering they were a playoff team three years ago, winning 93 games. The A’s will be playing their next three seasons in Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento, presumably the Yankee Stadium of West Sacramento. And, let’s face it, the Giants keep trying to turn themselves into a laugh riot
But there is no bigger joke team than Woody Johnson’s Jets, even if other teams in the NFL have won fewer games than they have.
Oh, sure. Woody fired his coach this season. He has now fired his general manager. The offensive coordinator lost his job. The defensive coordinator is now the head coach. If you believe the recent report in The Athletic — and why wouldn’t you, these are Woody’s Jets we’re talking about? — the owner also talked about benching Aaron Rodgers after just four games. That would be the same Aaron Rodgers to whom Woody had given everything except the naming rights to the team’s Training Center in Florham Park.
Could the Jets win a few games the rest of the way? They’ve got the Jaguars, another pro football embarrassment this season, on the schedule. If the Giants could clip the Seahawks in Seattle the Jets might be able to do the same in Jersey. But the Bills in Buffalo are on the schedule and there are two games left with the ascendant Dolphins. There’s also a game against the Rams, who are starting to come on.
Just to get to the 7-10 record they had last year, when Robert Saleh was still the coach and everybody except Joe Namath got a chance to play quarterback, they’d have to go 4-2 the rest of the way, and what have you seen that makes you think they’re capable of doing even that?
If you are keeping score at home, the owner of the Jets just fired the general manager, Joe Douglas, who assembled a roster that the owner proclaimed was the best he had seen in 25 years. He fired Saleh as his coach before that, saying he thought the Jets needed a spark, and has proceeded to see the Jets win one game since then; that isn’t just a spark, it’s a house fire. And the worst part of all of this is that Jets fans may not have reached the bottom of the barrel yet, because Woody is now in the process of trying to find somebody to run the Jets football operation because, hey, who wouldn’t jump at the chance to work for a grounded owner like this?
You keep hearing that all he has to do is hire the right guy to run the football operation. When has he?
Just to do a reset here: The Jets are in the process of going 14 straight seasons without a single postseason appearance. Incidentally? In that time the A’s, who have now become the Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars, have made it to baseball’s playoffs on six different occasions.
In the 14 seasons that we’re talking about, the Jets have had one winning season, nine years ago. Their record starting with the 2011 season is 80-142. Since the last winning season, their record is 44-98.
Then the Same Old Jets became the Jets of old Aaron Rodgers, who turns 41 on Dec. 2 and who, before he took his first snap as a Jet, had become the most powerful player in the history of Woody Johnson’s tenure, Ambassador Woody giving him whatever his heart desired: Offensive coordinators, backup quarterbacks, wide receivers. The result has been 3-8.
Is this all Rodgers’ fault? No, it is not. The Jets can’t stop the run, haven’t been able to run the ball on a consistent basis, can’t go past the 30-point barrier Rodgers keeps referencing, can’t tackle, have lost games to Jacoby Brissett and Bo Nix on a day when Nix had 60 passing yards. They got rolled the way they did by the Cardinals a couple of weeks ago.
Before they get to Thanksgiving in what was somehow described as a Super Bowl-or-bust season back in September, they don’t know who their quarterback is going to be next season, don’t know who the general manager is going to be, certainly don’t know who the coach is going to be, even though old friend Rex Ryan is trying to convince the whole world that he is the one to Make the Jets Great Again.
Can hiring the right general manager turn things around? Absolutely it can. I was on Michael Kay’s show on Wednesday referencing how if James Dolan could find his way to Leon Rose that Ambassador Woody could somehow do the same thing, somewhat like a football squirrel finding an acorn. But again: Off what we have seen from him, why would any Jets fans think that’s the way to bet.
What he should really do, if he is capable of actually being accountable, is not waste everybody time with another statement about another firing. He should raise a hand in public and say that the one most to blame for the chaos of this season, for the embarrassment this version of the Jets has become, is him. Not Fall Guy Saleh. Not Douglas. Not even this wounded and diminished version of Rodgers, who so far has looked like the 41-year old version of Willie Mays with the Mets. And guess what? Even at the age of 42, Willie played in a World Series.
So here we are. Mike Tannenbaum was fired after helping assemble two teams good enough to go to AFC championship games. John Idzik replaced Tannenbaum and Mike Maccagnan replaced Idzik and Douglas replaced Maccagnan. Now Woody Johnson is asked to not only start all over again — again — he is charged with making the most important hire he has ever made. The owner is charged with doing this after he has somehow managed to make himself the face of this mess, every bit as much as Rodgers has been.
Yeah, there are other lousy teams. Yeah, the Jets might still have it in them to win some games before this season is mercifully over. It does not change the fact that this has turned into as embarrassing a moment as they’ve had since Johnson bought the team. This time the one doing the Butt Fumble is the owner.
The owner is the only one who can stop the Jets from being this kind of comedy. And maybe, just maybe, this is a moment when he could finally stop blaming everybody for the current state of the New York Jets except himself.
Alex Rodriguez left the Mariners and the next year they won 116 regular season games.
Peyton Manning, one of the great quarterbacks of all time, left the University of Tennessee and the next year they had a perfect season and won a national championship without him, with Tee Martin as their quarterback.
The point here?
It won’t be the end of the world if Juan Soto doesn’t return to the Yankees, as wonderful a hitter as he has been his whole career, and as wonderful a hitter as he was for the Yankees hitting in front of Aaron Judge.
It is never about just one guy in baseball, the sport just doesn’t work that way.
It was a basketball coach named Bill Fitch who once said, “In baseball it doesn’t matter whether the left fielder knows the catcher’s name. It’s not basketball.”
The statement isn’t entirely true.
But it’s not entirely false, either.
It is also worth remembering that even though a lot of things happened with the Padres after Soto left them, they were 82-80 with Juan Soto in 2023 and 93-69 without him in 2024, a season in which the Yankees were a game better than the Padres with Soto.
Not only did the Soto-less Padres have the record that they did, they won one more game in their division series against the Dodgers than the Yankees did in the World Series.
I’m watching Jameis Winston fling the ball around in the snow on Thursday night and thinking, You know who could use a quarterback like that?
The Jets and the Giants, that’s who.
Jalen Brunson continues to be the most important Knick since Patrick Ewing, which means he’s one of the two most important since Clyde and Willis and Earl and Dollar Bill and Dave DeBusschere.
There is a terrific book out about the great Jimmy Breslin called “The Man Who Told the Truth,” written by a terrific old Newser named Richard Esposito.
Ichiro is a lock to make the Hall of Fame on his first try, no doubt.
But so, too, should Carsten Charles Sabathia Jr. make it to Cooperstown on his first try.
There’s not a single NFL analyst on TV better than Dan Orlovsky.
One more thing about Soto:
Not only might the Yankees lose Soto, they might lose him to either the Dodgers or the Mets.
Once the only thing that would have stung more than that was losing him to the Red Sox.
Whatever happened to the Red Sox, by the way?
To paraphrase Dan Jenkins, there are but two things I do about the Emirates NBA Cup, and both of them are care.
Finally today:
A happy birthday shout-out to our daughter, Hannah, who continues to live a life full of adventure, and joy, and fun, and make the world a more beautiful place because she is in it.
One thing never changes:
I’m still happy every time she walks into the room and sad when she leaves it.