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The New York Jets’ Vicious Cycle of Failure Under Woody Johnson
The Jets’ decision to trade Sauce Gardner and Quinnen Williams highlights yet another chapter in the franchise’s long-running cycle of mismanagement and disappointment.Since Woody Johnson bought the New York Jets in 2000, the team has compiled a 174-238 record. They haven’t made the playoffs since the 2010-11 season, the longest postseason drought in all of professional sports.Of the six full-time general managers during Johnson’s tenure, none lasted longer than Mike Tannenbaum‘s seven seasons. No head coach lasted more than 100 games, and the only one with a winning record was Al Groh, who went 9-7 in 2000 and resigned to coach the University of Virginia, never to be seen on an NFL sideline again.It’s no coincidence that the winning stopped once the continuity also ended at the executive level. John Idzik? Gone after two years when Geno Smith didn’t show enough promise at quarterback right away. Mike Maccagnan couldn’t win with Ryan Fitzpatrick and a top draft pick named Sam Darnold. When Joe Douglas couldn’t build a winner with Darnold, he drafted Zach Wilson and then turned to Aaron Rodgers when all else failed. We all know how that turned out.The rebuilding has been as constant as the losing. Under Johnson, everything and all else always fails. Stay Ahead of the Game, Get Our NewslettersSubscribe for the biggest stories in the business of sports and entertainment, daily.That Gang Green always sells out the gray, soulless MetLife Stadium, fourth in the league in attendance halfway through the season, is a testament to an amazing, loyal fan base that deserves far better than losing season after losing season. Now it’s first-year general manager Darren Mougey‘s turn to try and morph the Jets into a winner. After signing Justin Fields at quarterback and hoping a star-studded young defense would help the Jets contend for the playoffs, they’ve started 1-7 with Johnson saying at last month’s fall owners meeting that “if we could just complete a pass, it would look good.”Mougey clearly didn’t think the defense Douglas built was enough, completing two blockbuster trades prior to Tuesday’s NFL deadline that shook up the league. Cornerback Sauce Gardner, who signed a four-year, $120 million contract extension in July of this year, was traded to the Indianapolis Colts for first-round picks in 2026 and 2027 and wide receiver AD Mitchell despite the 25-year-old becoming the first rookie to be named first-team all-pro since 1981. Defensive tackle Quinnen Williams, a three-time Pro Bowler in his prime, was dealt to Dallas for a second-rounder in 2026, a first in 2027, and defensive tackle Mazi Smith.Reaction from a league source to the Jets’ two deadline day trades:“They took a top-five defense and tore it apart.”— Dianna Russini (@DMRussini) November 4, 2025 These trades set Mougey up well to build a new foundation with a 2027 draft class that’s slated to be superb. But none of that will matter unless he finds the Jets a quarterback. In the 25.5 seasons under Johnson, the only Pro Bowl season at quarterback the team had was Brett Favre in 2008 under Tannenbaum. After four first-round QBs and three second-round QBs were taken so far during Johnson’s run, there’s little reason to believe that the next one will finally be the guy.The damning reports about Johnson began to surface toward the end of last season, after he fired head coach Robert Saleh following an embarrassing showing in London and let Douglas go several weeks later. A bombshell article in The Athletic revealed that Johnson didn’t want Douglas to trade for wide receiver Jerry Jeudy because his Madden rating wasn’t high enough, and that Johnson would seriously question Douglas about things his teenage sons read in blogs. “Your job becomes managing Woody,” one team executive said in the piece. “They keep on doing the same thing over and over: They change the football people. The football people are not the issue. It’s, ‘Hey, I have brain cancer.’ And, ‘Well, just cut off your foot.’”In the annual NFLPA player report card survey, the Jets were the only team to receive an “F” grade in the category of ownership. “Rather than addressing concerns,” the report card read, “players believed that management responded to feedback by making conditions worse.” “They talked about the culture. It’s a problem, top down,” former NFLPA executive J.C. Tretter told reporters at the scouting combine in February. “It’s a culture of fear. And I think that stood out in those grades.”The Jets drafted Aaron Glenn in '94. Since '95, they have traded 16 (yes, 16!) of their 38 first-round picks. Sauce Gardner and Quinnen Williams join the club. The others:Hugh DouglasKeyshawn JohnsonJohn AbrahamSantana MossDewayne RoberstonJon VilmaDarrelle RevisSheldon…— Rich Cimini (@RichCimini) November 5, 2025 At the same fall owners meetings in which he dissed Fields, Johnson was also self-critical, telling The Athletic that “I’m obviously not a good owner in terms of winning.” When New York unveiled the new executive team of Mougey and head coach Aaron Glenn, Woody said, “I have to look in the mirror. I have to be a better owner … I’ve got to have patience. I’ve got to let them evolve in these positions.”Time will tell if Johnson practices what he preaches and is patient enough to give Mougey and Glenn time to succeed, but his track record, dating back more than a quarter century, indicates that he isn’t. Trading away your two best defensive players likely means that the Jets won’t be ready to compete for the playoffs in 2026, and perhaps not in 2027 either, unless Mougey comes up with a slew of draft picks, signings, and trades that turn around the Jets’ historically miserable fortunes.Despite Johnson’s poor ownership in terms of winning, the Jets are the NFL’s sixth most valuable franchise, worth $9.1 billion, more than 14 times what Woody paid for it at the turn of the millennium. Jets fans have to hope that, at 78 years old, Johnson will change his ways and help management oversee a playoff team for the first time since the second Obama administration.Until proven otherwise, it sure looks like this vicious Jets cycle of failure and futility will continue well into the foreseeable future.Read More:101111post6ORdate 
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Shlomo SprungShlomo Sprung is a Senior Staff Writer at Boardroom. He has more than a decade of experience in journalism, with past work appearing in Forbes, MLB.com, Awful Announcing, and The Sporting News. He graduated from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2011, and his Twitter and Spotify addictions are well under control. Just ask him.