Two days until Thanksgiving. Two-thirds of the NFL season in the books. Let’s go …
• Just sniffing around the New York Jets’ process, I don’t think the organization is going in with a preconceived notion on where it’ll land, or who it’ll land on, in its search for a new general manager and coach.
Ostensibly, the search kicked off with the Jets bringing in The 33rd Team, a group founded by their former general manager Mike Tannenbaum to assist with the process. Former Minnesota Vikings GM Rick Spielman, who was a lead consultant in the Washington Commanders search last year, will work with Tannenbaum to lead the effort.
This is the first time the Jets have fired their coach and GM in the same year since 2015. And just like that time, the Jets are going the consultant route (they had former Washington GM Charley Casserly and former Green Bay Packers GM/former Jets exec Ron Wolf), rather than hiring a search firm.
The upshot? First, Spielman and Tannenbaum led NFL front offices relatively recently, so they have the know-how of and connections to other front offices. Second, The 33rd Team, through its media arm and the research it does for teams, lives and breathes pro football 365 days of the year, which guides everything the group does. This is their first NFL search, but they’ve done college searches in the recent past, and they’ve done a ton of projects for and with NFL and college teams.
Then, there’s Tannenbaum’s presence. He worked for the Jets for 16 years, and was their GM for seven, giving him great perspective on the dynamics of the job, and market, and a good idea of who’d be a fit and who wouldn’t—which I believe will be a factor for the Jets.
The effort is already underway, with Tannenbaum, Spielman and the Jets launching research and vetting—and they’ve done it with a blank canvas. Will the GM report to the coach? Could a coach pick the GM? Will the two be paired and both report to the owner? All those things are on the table, and the thought is that it could stay that way even when interviews begin in January, with decisions potentially made based on the best candidates, and what it might take to land a top-shelf coach or GM.
For now, though, the Jets have six weeks. So the focus is on coming up with detailed, thorough lists for both the coach and GM openings, so everyone can hit the ground running in January. And maybe, just maybe, get it right after a decade of ineptitude for the franchise.
• One difference-maker in the AFC playoff race that might get lost in the revival of TuaMania in South Florida—first-round edge rusher Chop Robinson.
The Penn State product has 3.5 sacks in four games this month, capped with a sack-and-a-half in Sunday’s game-wrecking performance against the New England Patriots. And while Robinson’s turned a lot of heads of late, his veteran teammates haven’t been caught off-guard by it at all. In fact, they’ve seen this coming for a while.
“I’m not surprised at all. This is expected,” Calais Campbell told me. “He’s been putting the work in. I tell him all the time—Just get shots on goal. Beat the guy in front of you. Don’t worry about the actual stat. Beat the guy in front of you and the stats take care of themselves. He’s consistently winning, showing up in pressure, pressure, pressures, but no sack. Then the next thing you know, that dam opens and then they come in bunches. Now he’s rolling.”
It’s a pretty massive development for a Miami Dolphins team that’s playing without big-money edge rushers Jaelan Phillips and Bradley Chubb (Phillips is out for the year, and Chubb is still rehabbing from a Week 17 ACL tear last year.)
• My opinion: The right thing for Daniel Jones to do right now is follow the Sam Darnold blueprint. Go sign with a contender running a good offensive system, and sit behind an established starter where you might get a few reps, but won’t be relied on right now.
It sounds counterintuitive for a pro athlete, but it’s worked for Darnold.
It gave him a different perspective on the game and, to a degree, slowed things down around him. Those who’ve watched Jones closely see a quarterback who’s broken, evidenced by his hesitancy to pull the trigger, even when there’s a clear and obvious target out there for him.
Going into a fire-drill situation where he may need to play in a week, with his confidence already shaken, won’t help anyone. The impact of failure, and maybe even the residue of watching his professional future litigated on Hard Knocks, was visible in Jones’s play over the past few months. It’ll only get worse if he’s haphazardly thrown out onto the field with teammates he doesn’t know, running an offense he doesn’t have down.
To me, Buffalo makes the most sense. There’s some scheme familiarity, and he won’t have to play. Plus, there are some stylistic similarities between his best and what Josh Allen brings to the table on a weekly basis (I’m not saying Jones is Allen; he clearly isn’t). All of which, I think, would make for a smooth transition and a good learning environment.
• While we’re there, good luck to NFL Films getting anyone to sign up for Hard Knocks: Offseason again. In discussing Jones’s confidence issue last week with execs from rival teams, all of them, every single one, brought up the team’s critical look at its quarterback that aired for everyone to see in July.
I do have some sympathy for the Giants in that it sounds like they were told the show would be one thing and it became something else. But if you’re another team, hearing that from New York would only make you less likely to sign up to have your offseason on TV.
A lot of it goes back to how things have changed between Films and the teams, a dynamic that we dove into in a story over the summer (former Las Vegas Raiders GM Mike Mayock had strong feelings on the topic). The bottom line: Things aren’t the same as they used to be. And that’s certainly exposed when you’re broadcasting a part of the year when so much of what a team is doing is handling sensitive information.
• In doing some reporting on the Cleveland Browns last week, I got a little more insight into how Mike Vrabel has helped the team in a consultant role.
First, his presence on the team’s trip to New Orleans, and on the sideline against the Pittsburgh Steelers, came at Kevin Stefanski’s request. The feeling was that Vrabel could help as another voice for the players he’d worked with during the week. And as for who he’s working with, over the summer he helped out with tight ends, a position he moonlighted at as a player. More recently, he’s been with the offensive linemen.
All of it, to me, is why he should be at the top of a lot of lists in a couple of months. He’s won as a head coach, yes, but more than just that he’s got the ability to coach, and work with, just about every player on the roster. Which illustrates his big-picture vision for the game, something that showed up time and again in game management when he was in Tennessee (that’s one area Cleveland has tapped into as much with Vrabel).
So, yeah, if teams operate logically when hiring season comes, Vrabel will have some options on where he wants to coach in 2025.
• The Baltimore Ravens doing what they did defensively last night without Roquan Smith deserves mention. Baltimore’s deep well of talent was apparent. John Harbaugh gave fifth-year man Malik Harrison, who’s come up through Baltimore’s system, a game ball after Harrison led the linebackers in snaps played (50) and the team in tackles (12). And Trenton Simpson, who Baltimore believes will in time be an upgrade over Patrick Queen at the spot Queen vacated, flashed his ability again.
What’s happening there, to me, isn’t totally unlike what’s happened with an offensive line group that turned over 60% of its this offseason. In both cases, the Ravens relied on their ability to develop people through their system. And where it pays off, I think, will be in a team that’s still ascending as the playoffs start.
• As the San Francisco 49ers season sits on the brink, I think this is at least interesting: Their top six cap numbers for 2025 (Fred Warner, Deebo Samuel, Javon Hargrave, Trent Williams, George Kittle, Nick Bosa) account for roughly $150 million in charges. The next four are between $10 million and $13 million. The two after that are just under $10 million. So, 12 guys get the Niners very close to the 2025 cap. And that’s without Brock Purdy signed.
How the rest of the season unfolds could chart how a lot of things go, in terms of how the team deals with all that in 2025.
• The signing of D.J. Humphries isn’t a total indictment on the work of Wanya Morris and Kingsley Suamataia. It’s a statement that the Kansas City Chiefs can’t simply ride out the level of inconsistency those two have brought to the left tackle spot anymore. The expectation is Humphries, once he’s proven to be in game shape and mentally ready, will start. That, of course, is barring some sort of major step taken by the two young guys in the meantime.
• Losing J.K. Dobbins, even if it’s not for the year, is a major blow for the Los Angeles Chargers. And knowing his story, it really sucks to see that injury happen.
• I think the Raiders are taking a quarterback in April, come hell or high water.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as How the Jets Are Approaching Their Search for a New GM and Coach.