Woody Johnson’s Jets: ‘Madden’ scores, a misplaced season and ‘the most dysfunctional place imaginable’

Through Zack Rosenblatt, Dianna Russini and Michael Silver

Woody Johnson determined to do his personal analysis.

The Unutilized York Jets’ proprietor was once at his space in Palm Seashore, Fla., terminating February, discussing attainable offseason acquisitions with group decision-makers as they watched sport tape. Large receiver Jerry Jeudy, a former Denver Broncos first-round select, flashed at the display. Jets basic supervisor Joe Douglas expressed passion, consistent with any person usual with the assembly. Johnson took out his telephone and began typing.

A couple of weeks next, Douglas and his Broncos counterpart, George Paton, had been deep in negotiations for a business that will have despatched Jeudy to the Jets and given pace Corridor of Repute quarterback Aaron Rodgers some other attainable playmaker. The Broncos felt a trade in was once close. Nearest, rapidly, all of it fell aside. In Denver’s government workplaces, they couldn’t consider the explanation why.

Douglas informed the Broncos that Johnson didn’t wish to put together the business since the proprietor felt Jeudy’s participant score in “Madden NFL,” the usual online game, wasn’t top plenty, consistent with more than one league resources. The Broncos in the long run traded the receiver to the Cleveland Browns. Utmost Sunday, Jeudy crossed the 1,000-yard receiving mark for the primary day in his occupation.

Getting into this season, the Jets had hopes of finishing the franchise’s 13-year playoff drought — the longest within the 4 primary males’s North American sports activities — and quieting years of communicate in regards to the franchise’s disorder. Rather, this season has most effective cemented the Jets’ popularity.

Head professor Robert Saleh was once fired 5 video games into the marketing campaign. Douglas was once fired six weeks next. Johnson recommended benching Rodgers because of beggarly efficiency — a Jets spokesperson stated the landlord was once “being provocative. He made the statement in jest to see how it would be handled.” A moment next, the Jets traded for Davante Adams, the All-Professional wideout and Rodgers’ related pal and previous teammate in Inexperienced Bay. Unutilized York has stumbled to a 4-10 document and can omit the postseason for the 14th immediately season.

Any other offseason of giveover awaits, and on the root of the franchise’s issues is Johnson, who was once characterised as an over-involved, impulsive proprietor in conversations with greater than 20 society in and across the Jets group — tide and previous gamers, coaches and group executives — who had been granted anonymity to bring to talk brazenly with out worry of reprisal.

“They keep on doing the same thing over and over: they change the football people. The football people are not the issue,” one former government stated. “It’s, ‘Hey, I have brain cancer.’ And, ‘Well, just cut off your foot.’”

Johnson, who declined The Athletic’s request for remark, soured on his franchise quarterback not up to a yr later making a bet obese on him, denigrated his personal gamers within the reserve room and looked as if it would stick to decision-making recommendation from his teenager sons, consistent with numerous group and league resources. And the proposed Jeudy business wasn’t the one day Johnson cited “Madden” scores when comparing gamers.

“There are organizations where it is all set up for you to win,” stated a participant with the group in 2023. “It feels completely different (with the Jets). It’s the most dysfunctional place imaginable.”

Forward of the Jets-Giants preseason finale at MetLife Stadium in 2019, an administrative workman popped into the group’s teaching workplaces to put together a statement to then-head professor Adam Gase and his group of workers. Woody Johnson, later serving as U.S. ambassador to the UK within the Trump management, was once briefly coming back from London. The workman stated everybody will have to please see Johnson as “Mr. Ambassador.”

That has held true lengthy later Johnson left govt and returned to his position as Jets chairman in January 2021, placing a discordant sound amongst those that consider the group has lengthy been plagued via mismanagement.

“I guess that’s what you’d call him,” one workman professor stated. “I’d never been around royalty before.”

Johnson is an inheritor to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune, however he spends maximum of his running days on the Jets facility in Florham Ground, N.J., and frequently meets with the top professor and basic supervisor. When he purchased the group in 2000, Johnson idea he was once inheriting Invoice Belichick as professor — hand-picked via Invoice Parcells to break in ahead of Parcells resigned. Belichick lasted just one past, scribbling “I resign as HC of the NYJ” on a serviette at his introductory information convention ahead of bolting for the Unutilized England Patriots.

The mythical professor has spent a lot of the age twenty years torturing the Jets franchise, at the subject and rancid of it. Generation out of training this autumn, Belichick mocked Johnson in numerous media appearances (Belichick’s camp additionally reached out to the Jets about their head-coaching emptiness). In an look on ESPN’s “ManningCast” all through a Monday night time sport between the Jets and Expenses on Oct. 14 — Unutilized York’s first sport since firing Saleh — Belichick described the landlord’s solution to operating the group as “ready, fire, aim.”

Many that had been a part of the Jets group all through Johnson’s tenure heard that remark and indubitably. Others pointed to the landlord’s phrases on Oct. 15, the past the Jets got Adams, when Johnson stated, “Thinking is overrated.”

“Woody is just acting on instinct,” stated a tide Jets government. “With Woody, it’s like, ‘I’m right — prove me wrong.’ You just don’t know what to expect … He’s been right enough, just with his random opinions, that (a bad decision) doesn’t dissuade him. And when he’s wrong, who’s gonna hold him accountable?”

Right through the once a year NFL Draft, Johnson is understood to accumulation to himself age selections are being made, consistent with one former government, later go the room and retreat to a close-by snack bar with confidants to put together “smart-ass lines” in regards to the entrance administrative center’s selections. Crew decision-makers didn’t admire Johnson’s after-the-fact opinions, however the proprietor was once every now and then confirmed right kind: The manager recalls Johnson being particularly vocal when former basic supervisor Mike Maccagnan drafted quarterback Christian Hackenberg out of Penn Situation in the second one around of the 2016 Draft. Hackenberg by no means performed a regular-season snap for the Jets.

Some within the group consider Johnson is ate up with the folk belief of his franchise, every now and then on the expense of on-the-field good fortune. When the Jets traded quarterback Zach Wilson to the Broncos terminating April, Denver requested Douglas to incorporate the general select of the draft (257th general). Consistent with a supply usual with the negotiations, Johnson prompt Douglas to in lieu business the 256th select — which the Jets additionally owned — so Unutilized York may make a choice “Mr. Irrelevant,” the general select of the draft who’s every year celebrated upon his variety.

“Can you believe that?” the supply stated. “He thought he needed the Mr. Irrelevant pick to get a Brock Purdy (the final pick of the 2022 draft who has emerged as a franchise quarterback in San Francisco). I don’t think that’s ever happened in the history of the NFL: A team wanted a worse pick.”

The Broncos impaired select Negative. 256 to shoot offensive shield Nick Gargiulo, who’s now at the Broncos’ lively roster. The Jets impaired the “Mr. Irrelevant” select on Alabama protection Jaylen Key, who didn’t live on the general roster cutdown and is now not on their follow squad.

Johnson weighs in on issues during the group, from lineup selections (he pressured meantime head professor Jeff Ulbrich to bench creation protection Tony Adams in November) to the group agenda (he sought after the Jets to follow all through their bye moment, a lot to the chagrin of group leaders). “He’s like most team owners,” the group spokesperson stated. “He asks questions of his staff to better understand what their plans are.”

“Your job becomes managing Woody,” a tide group government stated. “That’s not unique for an NFL GM — the difference here is that not only are you managing Woody, but you have to manage all the people who influence him. That could be family, that could be media, that could be people in the building.”

When Johnson left for the U.Ok. in 2017, his sons, Brick and Jack, had been 11 and 9, respectively. When he returned, they had been youngsters. Utmost yr, Johnson began together with his sons in some conferences on the group facility. For some Jets workers, the sons’ expanding involvement clarified their father’s propensity for sharing posts from X and articles from numerous retailers, together with a weblog known as “Jets X-Factor,” with the group’s govern decision-makers.

“When we’re discussing things, you’ll hear Woody cite something that Brick or Jack read online that’s being weighed equally against whatever opinion someone else in the department has,” stated one Jets government.

“I answer to a teenager,” Douglas quipped to society related to him ahead of the season in an acknowledgment of the perceived energy dynamic.

Johnson’s connection with Jeudy’s “Madden” score was once, to a couple within the Jets’ group, an indication of Brick and Jack’s affect. Any other instance got here when Johnson driven again on signing free-agent shield John Simpson because of a lackluster “awareness” score in Madden. The Jets signed Simpson anyway, and he has had a cast season: Professional Soccer Center of attention recently has him graded because the eighth-best shield within the NFL.

The Jets spokesperson disputed the concept Brick and Jack’s observations affect the group’s decision-making procedure. “It is used as a reference point; it is not determinative,” the spokesperson stated. “It’s really sad that an adult would use a misleading anecdote about teenagers to make their father look bad. It’s ridiculous, quite honestly, the idea that this was used to influence the opinion of experienced executives.

“(The sons) have no roles in the organization. It’s completely ridiculous to suggest that any outside info is intended to replace the opinions of (Woody Johnson’s) staff.”

The Johnson nation’s habits within the Jets reserve room has additionally develop into a subject matter, consistent with group and league resources. NFL reserve rooms are restricted-access areas normally restricted to gamers, coaches, group workforce and media contributors. However Brick and Jack have introduced pals — female and male — into the reserve room, and tide and previous gamers and coaches informed The Athletic that Woody Johnson, his spouse, Suzanne Ircha Johnson, and his sons criticized gamers within the reserve room.

In 2022, quarterback Mike White performed thru damaged ribs in a late-season sport in opposition to the Seahawks with postseason hopes at the series. White performed poorly; the Jets misplaced and had been eradicated from playoff rivalry. Nearest the sport, with the quarterback within the showers later throwing his helmet to the reserve room ground, more than one Jets gamers stated they heard Woody Johnson say, “You should throw your helmet, you f—ing suck.” The remark were given again to White. The group spokesperson stated Johnson apologized to the quarterback, who declined to remark for this tale.

Within the postgame reserve room later terminating yr’s Month 17 loss to the Cleveland Browns, more than one gamers stated they heard Johnson’s sons loudly disparaging positive Jets gamers.

This yr, on Halloween night time, the Jets registered their first victory since Saleh’s firing 4 weeks previous. It was once an important time for a suffering group. Rodgers walked into an energized reserve room with a sport ball in hand, and it was once anticipated that he’d give the ball to Ulbrich, a commonplace officialism when a professor will get his first NFL win.

However ahead of Rodgers may discuss, Brick Johnson took some other sport ball and awarded it to huge receiver Garrett Wilson in a profanity-laced exclamation, which the landlord’s son next posted to Instagram. Woody Johnson later gave Ulbrich the ball Rodgers have been preserving. More than one gamers stated the power felt tired out of the room.

“It was the most awkward, cringe-worthy, brutal experience,” one participant stated.

The top level of the Johnson-Rodgers marriage got here at Rodgers’ introductory information convention, when he spoke of the Jets’ lone Tremendous Bowl trophy — gained in 1969 — having a look a tiny “lonely.” Unutilized York entered the 2023 season as one of the crucial league’s buzziest groups — and probably Tremendous Bowl contenders — and the Jets had been decided on to look on HBO’s “Hard Knocks” all through coaching camp. Johnson wore a personalized chain that includes 80 carats of emeralds and diamonds spelling out “Woody,” a present from megastar cornerback Sauce Gardner.

Nearest Rodgers tore his Achilles at the fourth play games of the season, and the whole lot modified. Following surgical operation, Rodgers rehabbed with the purpose of doubtless returning on the finish of the season, however provided that the Jets had been nonetheless in playoff rivalry.

In Month 14, Unutilized York was once mathematically eradicated with a 30-0 loss to the Dolphins. Rodgers most popular to rehab on his personal in Los Angeles with an visual towards the 2024 season, however Johnson, consistent with group resources, insisted that Rodgers follow with the group, so the quarterback reluctantly returned to Unutilized York. When Rodgers was once activated off injured book 5 days ahead of Christmas, which resulted within the leave of fullback Nick Bawden, Rodgers stated on “The Pat McAfee Show” that the go wasn’t his thought.

“There was a conversation: ‘Do you want to practice?’ And I said, ‘Not at the expense of somebody getting cut.’ I know how this works,” Rodgers stated. “I didn’t feel like I needed to practice to continue my rehab. I could do on-the-field stuff on the side. But obviously I got overruled there.”

A number of Jets gamers and coaches — Garrett Wilson and operating again Breece Corridor, particularly — had been unsatisfied with offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett during the 2023 marketing campaign. There have been rumblings that Johnson sought after to fireplace Hackett, so Rodgers, who considers the professor a related pal, introduced it up with the landlord on the finish of the season. The dialog “didn’t go over well” with Johnson, consistent with a tide Jets government.

Johnson in the long run didn’t power Saleh to fireplace Hackett, as he had with Mike LaFleur later the 2022 season. Within the offseason, Saleh attempted to rent a veteran offensive professor to fasten the Jets group of workers and probably release Hackett’s position, talking with Arthur Smith, Kliff Kingsbury, Luke Getsy and Eric Bieniemy. Rodgers were given at the telephone in an try to retain, however each and every professor took jobs with offensive coordinator titles somewhere else.

Sooner than this season, consistent with a group supply, Johnson demanded that Saleh’s signature word — “All Gas, No Brakes” — be stripped off the partitions across the facility. “Another completely out-of-context and false narrative,” the group spokesperson stated. “That was removed as part of the entire organizational rebrand.” Saleh next presented a fresh group motto: “Love and Regard,” which was once no longer displayed at the facility’s partitions.

Rodgers and Johnson spoke on Oct. 7, simply later the Jets misplaced to the Vikings in London to release to 2-3, a sport in the back of the Expenses within the AFC East with Buffalo coming to MetLife Stadium refer to Monday night time. Consistent with a group supply, Rodgers implored Johnson to stay affected person.

Please see morning, Saleh known as Rodgers to let him know he was once demoting Hackett and putting in passing sport coordinator Todd Downing because the fresh play games caller. Rodgers made it sunny to Saleh that he didn’t accept as true with the verdict — such a lot in order that Saleh informed his group of workers to get spare Tyrod Taylor able to play games in case a banged-up, disgruntled Rodgers wouldn’t, consistent with a group supply.

In a while later on, round 10 a.m. ET, Woody and Christopher Johnson, Woody’s brother and the Jets’ vice president, walked into Saleh’s administrative center. Woody informed Saleh he was once fired. Saleh requested why. Woody informed him he didn’t suppose Saleh may flip the season round and that the group wanted a spark. Nearest the Johnsons walked out of the room.

Ulbrich, put in because the meantime professor, went ahead with Saleh’s plan to demote Hackett and controlled to quiet the waters with Rodgers, who hadn’t been in bias of firing Saleh, consistent with more than one group resources.

At the Dec. 3 episode of McAfee’s display, Rodgers, in connection with the 12-2 Detroit Lions, mentioned how a lot of a extra it makes when homeowners again their coaches and basic managers each privately and publicly. The later past, he was once requested via contributors of the media if he felt that Jets possession operates in that approach.

“Is that a rhetorical question?” Rodgers stated. “I cited an example I’ve seen. There were other examples in Green Bay, both for and maybe not, as for whoever was in charge. But I think it’s an important part of ownership to hire the right guys, set the vision and support them when the outside world is trying to tear them down.”

On follow-up, he was once requested once more whether or not he believes that’s been performed in Unutilized York. “I’d have to look,” he answered. “I’ll ask you guys, has there been a lot of public comments? Supportive comments?”

The reaction from newshounds that past? Now not actually, there were firings.

“Yeah, there’s your answer,” Rodgers answered.

The Jets stored the trade out of the transcript of Rodgers’ information convention.

Along with firing the top professor and basic supervisor and suggesting the benching of the megastar quarterback, Johnson has pursued cuts around the Jets group.

This offseason, he pressured Saleh to fireplace 5 coaches and wouldn’t permit Douglas to interchange former workman GM Rex Hogan (who Johnson pressured Douglas to fireplace in January). “The open role was used to re-organize the staff,” the group spokesperson stated. “The notion that he didn’t want that position replaced is untrue. The responsibilities were filled by employees who deserved promotions.”

The Jets didn’t rent officers for coaching camp, a typical follow within the NFL, later being probably the most penalized group within the league in 2023 (they’re the third-most penalized group in 2024). They did have officers for 2 joint practices with the Unutilized York Giants and Washington Commanders, respectively.

A number of males from Johnson’s funding staff had been attending loose agent, draft and alternative soccer operations conferences at Johnson’s behest over the terminating yr, consistent with a tide Jets government. They’ve additionally interviewed Jets workers from around the group about their roles and techniques they really feel the Jets can advance. “It was a positive initiative that identified real gaps in process and communication and collaboration,” the Jets spokesperson stated. “(Woody Johnson) values the independent feedback. It’s a way to avoid groupthink. We learned a lot from it.”

More than one Jets workers please see the crowd of guys as “The Bobs,” a nod to the condescending company potency experts from the movie “Office Space.” The coming of “The Bobs” has most effective heightened a way of dread across the construction, the place some workers don’t really feel like they may be able to discuss freely.

“There’s no nice way to say what we need to say, which is: Unless we drastically alter our culture and the way we do things from the top down, we have no chance,” one government stated. “There’s not a comfortable environment where you can speak your mind and try to address things that could improve the situation. You have to tiptoe around it.”

The Jets spokesperson disputed that characterization. “That’s just a false premise,” the spokesperson stated. “(Woody Johnson) really just seeks out and welcomes feedback and debate. We wouldn’t have been named one of the best places to work in New Jersey if people thought that way … there’s never been a complaint.”

Sooner or later Aaron Rodgers will go back for a 3rd season in Unutilized York is among the key questions dealing with the Jets this offseason. (Mike Ehrmann / Getty Photographs)

As lately as three-and-a-half years in the past, there was once a unique order at Florham Ground. Woody Johnson’s absence all through the primary Trump presidential time period supposed that Christopher was once operating the display.

Like Woody, Christopher Johnson was once influenced in all probability too closely via media protection — one group supply stated he was once identified to incline on well-known media contributors for recommendation all through his head professor and GM searches in 2019 — however the influence he gave to many within the construction was once that he sought after to present the keys to the society he leased and allow them to shoot the wheel.

“Chris was really, really laid back,” stated a former Jets professor. “He’s not a person with any type of ego. When he would talk with you, he was really a regular dude. He never, ever acted like he was the owner or he was in charge; he was just basically trying to get along.”

When Christopher Johnson leased Douglas (in 2019) and Saleh (in 2021), each had been beneath the influence that, when he returned, Woody Johnson would shoot a in a similar way hands-off way. They briefly discovered how fallacious that guess was once as Woody took keep an eye on and Chris stepped again.

“It’s not like he just disappeared, but you wouldn’t know if Chris was in the building or even in the room with you,” a former Jets government stated. “He’s just so quiet and reserved. And that’s not a bad thing.”

Some Jets workers was hoping Woody may retake his ambassadorship within the U.Ok. later Donald Trump was once elected president in November, which might as soon as once more put Christoper in rate. However on Dec. 2, Trump nominated billionaire Arkansas funding banker Warren Stephens to the put up. Consistent with group resources, the verdict got here as a amaze to the Jets proprietor.

Because the Jets related the 2024 season, they’ll input an offseason promising wholesale exchange, usual field for a company that hasn’t discovered a lot balance since Johnson purchased the franchise from Leon Hess in 2000. In 25 years, the Jets have hired 8 meantime or full-time head coaches (9 when you rely Belichick) and 7 basic managers. They’ll want some other fresh head professor and basic supervisor and should come to a decision if they would like in order Rodgers again for what could be his twenty first NFL season – if he desires to go back.

The ones selections stay Woody Johnson’s to put together.

(Representation: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; footage: Chris Coduto, Matthew Stockman, Cooper Neil, Perry Knotts / Getty Photographs)