Joe Douglas takes ‘ownership’ of Jets roster failures with job on line in 2024
Joe Douglas is 27-56 in five years as the Jets’ general manager.
The team has not reached the playoffs or had a winning season.
Douglas is returning for a sixth season in 2024 and it is going to be playoffs or bust for the GM.
“We need to win,” Douglas said in his season-ending press conference Monday. “My record is not good enough and I know that and everything we do moving forward is to win and that is it, that is all that matters.”
The Jets went 7-10 for a second straight season and there are plenty of questions for Douglas about how he constructed the team’s roster.
For Douglas, he said the toughest thing is that the Jets did not handle adversity well in each of the last two years.
“Sitting here as a general manager, and for the last two years, having our team defined by not being able to overcome the adversity, that’s a tough thing, and that’s directly on me, and I take ownership of that,” Douglas said.
Douglas took a huge swing in April when he made the trade with the Packers for quarterback Aaron Rodgers.
The big swing did not work out when Rodgers went down four plays into the season.
The Jets ended up starting three other quarterbacks, including 2021 first-round pick Zach Wilson.
There were some positives from Wilson but ultimately he struggled.
Many Jets fans wondered why the team did not have a better backup plan than Wilson or sign a better backup after Rodgers went down.
“We went into the offseason with the plan of having Zach here with Aaron, it was going to be a great benefit,” Douglas said. “Zach had a great training camp, and we felt that we had a good plan in place. Obviously, things didn’t work, so hindsight’s always 20/20, so it’s easy to go back and say ‘woulda, coulda, shoulda,’ but what in our process was wrong, because you try to take all the information you have at hand and make the best decision you can make with that information, so what specifically didn’t work with that process, and making sure we don’t make the same mistake twice.”
