You have to feel for Joe Douglas. Unless you think Joe Douglas deserved this. He almost certainly deserved better … and yet he made his bed.
Such is the enigma wrapped in a riddle that general managers of the New York Jets – or former ones in Douglas’ case – must try to decipher.
Up now? Rookie GM Darren Mougey, who’s joined at the hip with rookie head coach Aaron Glenn – a tandem already providing significant indicators that they’re learning from the mistakes of Douglas and his predecessors (and peers) while reaping the fruits of his more productive labor.
Mougey spent the past three seasons as the assistant general manager of the Denver Broncos, possessing a front-row seat to the disastrous trade and extension for Russell Wilson and then the near-instant overhaul under coach Sean Payton, who had the team in the playoffs with rookie quarterback Bo Nix last season. Glenn? He came to Detroit with kneecap-biting rookie coach Dan Campbell in 2021 and helped him build an ascendent powerhouse by imbuing a culture that players invested into while identifying and rewarding those who emerged as franchise cornerstones or potential ones.
And what are we seeing from the Jets now? Things atypical of the New York Jets.
Just this week, they extended the contracts of wideout Garrett Wilson and cornerback Sauce Gardner, arguably the club’s hardest-working, most marketable and (go figure) most talented players. And they did so not at the last minute but as soon as the duo – each won Rookie of the Year honors on their respective sides of the ball in 2022, when they were drafted by Douglas – became extension-eligible this year.
The significance extends to numerous levels.
Paying players obviously trending toward superstardom early is a Lions-type move, not a Jets-type move. Heck, it’s a Howie Roseman-level move, and it’s fair to say that the Philadelphia Eagles’ mastermind architect is currently the league’s top executive. And, sure, Gardner is now atop the financial pyramid for corners with a four-year, $120.4 million pact, but only incrementally so after it was quickly beginning to escalate in the aftermath of deals signed by Patrick Surtain II, Jaycee Horn and Derek Stingley II. Wilson (4 years, $130 million) is a veritable bargain at $32.5 million per year once his extension, like Gardner’s, takes effect in 2027 – especially given how the receiver market has exploded, Ja’Marr Chase becoming the first to reel in a deal averaging more than $40 million in March.
It’s also indicative of the foundation that’s taking shape when a pair of rising stars, both about to turn 25, fully buy into it before Glenn has coached a game and want to be linchpins of a long-hapless franchise that’s sorely lacked them for most of the past 14 seasons – which coincides with the NFL’s longest active playoff drought.
“Yup, Jets green has been running through me since the day they drafted me. Despite the ups and downs, the faith is mutual,” Wilson posted to his X account Tuesday. “(That) means the world to me. Excited to start a new version of the chase next week.”
The best football teams are typically helmed by players who work the hardest and are extraordinarily talented. When they’re also young and willing to lead, a Lombardi jackpot just might follow.
Furthermore, the deals for Gardner and Wilson not only tie them to the Jets for the next six seasons but will also provide Mougey the financial flexibility to continue augmenting the roster in the future. And there should be a lot of runway to draft, develop and sign players and/or make targeted forays into free agency. Aside from Wilson and Gardner, Pro Bowl defensive lineman Quinnen Williams is the only other first-rounder the Jets have taken in the last 13 years who’s signed a second contract with the team. Pass rusher Jermaine Johnson and guard Alijah Vera-Tucker, also Round 1 choices by Douglas, could be next if they can stay healthy while regularly providing the top-tier abilities they’ve flashed in past seasons.
(One other nod to Douglas. He had the foresight to trade safety Jamal Adams, whom he didn’t draft, in 2020 and somehow got two first-round picks in return from the Seattle Seahawks, selections that basically brought Vera-Tucker and Wilson into the building.)
But, as we know, Douglas, fired last November in the midst of a bitterly disappointing 2024 campaign, didn’t prove to be the guy to end a championship drought that extends back to the legendary 1968 team. Part of that was due to circumstances beyond his control, collateral damage typical of the New York market – and longtime owner Woody Johnson’s club specifically – even if Douglas was never one who provided much grist for the notorious media mill.
However Glenn, a first-round pick of the Jets in 1994 and a topflight corner for them for eight years, understands his environs. Seemingly the anti-Rex Ryan, he’s been all bite and no bark so far, largely eliminating the leaks and headlines that tend to swirl around this organization – something that former quarterback Aaron Rodgers, whom Glenn wasted little time firing (per Rodgers himself), claimed was an important objective in Florham Park … even if the four-time league MVP hardly practiced what he preached.
Ah, yes, Rodgers. And Zach Wilson. And Sam Darnold. All reminders of Douglas’ fatal flaw: failure to identify and obtain the savior quarterback this franchise has been seeking five decades on from Hall of Famer Joe Namath’s heyday.
Douglas, who inherited Darnold when he was hired in 2019, should have immediately put the players, coaches and infrastructure around an obviously talented player rather than maroon him on a talent- and support-devoid island, not to be confused with Revis Island. Douglas should have provided Darnold with immediate reinforcements by drafting Chase or offensive tackle Penei Sewell – ironically, he became a mainstay of the Lions’ rebuild with Glenn – in 2021 rather than falling in love with Zach Wilson. (And make no mistake, I wrote the same thing with foresight, not hindsight, that year.)
Instead, Douglas went for Zach Wilson, who put on a show at his BYU pro day four years ago but couldn’t beat Coastal Carolina when it counted nor do much of anything right in the NFL – despite having better players and coaches around him than did Darnold, whom Douglas exported to the Carolina Panthers. Then, after two years of the Zach Wilson Experience – naturally, the headlines he generated off the field created a bigger stir than anything he did on it – Douglas was compelled, whether by choice or decree, to trade for Rodgers in 2023.
You know the rest.
Again, the Jets don’t play a game that counts for another 53 days. But the 53-man roster seems to be shaping up nicely as Mougey and Glenn reinvest in Douglas’ wins while seemingly accruing some of their own after crafting a draft class that was almost universally praised in April. That followed the fairly high-reward, low-risk signing of quarterback Justin Fields in March. He’s said and done all the right things since, on and off the field, while being reunited with Garrett Wilson, his teammate at Ohio State.
“I think I can be great, and that’s been the goal for me my whole life, my whole career,” Fields, who often gave Glenn fits as a member of the Chicago Bears, said during Jets OTAs in May. “I think the sky’s the limit for this team, for this offense.
“I mean, we have all the guys we need, we have all the talent. So it’s really just going to come down to discipline and execution when the games come.”
And they’re certainly coming. That’s when Fields must prove the eye-popping talent he frequently displayed with the Bears – with whom he had Darnold-level help – and in an aborted opportunity last year with the Pittsburgh Steelers can be consistently reproduced under first-year offensive coordinator Tanner Engstrand.
At minimum, Fields is already feeding into the mentality Glenn wants from his team.
“This guy is just a workaholic. He comes in early, he’s here late, and he’s trying to digest everything and download all the information and do things the right way,” Engstrand said of Fields during June’s minicamp.
“He’s trying to do things that we’re asking, and I think he’s really put the next foot forward every day, just trying to stack days, and it’s been really good.”
Even if Fields doesn’t blossom into the franchise quarterback many thought he might be when he was drafted by Chicago, nine spots after Zach Wilson, in 2021, it wouldn’t result in the kind of calamitous mistake that can set a franchise back years. Best case, Fields becomes the Jets’ version of Detroit’s Jared Goff, something of a reclamation project who simply needed a change of scenery. Worst case? The Jets seem increasingly well positioned to take another whack (or two) at their quarterback conundrum, the 2026 draft potentially a target-rich environment from that perspective.
For now, things aren’t necessarily quiet around the Jets as training camp approaches and the new money flies around while Glenn and Mougey literally take care of business.
But, as Douglas could surely tell you, that’s hardly business as usual in these parts.