The NFL Players Association recently released the results of a survey in which Jets players ranked Woody Johnson as the league’s worst owner. Some might call that a bad sign. Woody Johnson is apparently not among them.
#Jets owner Woody Johnson on the unfavorable F grade he received from the NFLPA survey/report in February.
“My first thought was it’s totally bogus.”
Added that he still wants to improve, and is always focused on improving, “but not because of this bogus report.” pic.twitter.com/DWYUuQ7bBR
— Connor Hughes (@Connor_J_Hughes) March 31, 2025
2024 was a season in which Johnson showed unbelievably erratic decision making. Many of his decisions can be linked directly to the team’s demise. The players in the locker room sure felt so. You can tell how “focused on improving” Johnson is by dismissing their concerns out of hand.
You can also tell how focused he is in improving from this comment.
“The experiment was a good experiment, to try to bring him in, but it didn’t work out.” - Woody Johnson on Aaron Rodgers #Jets
— Connor Hughes (@Connor_J_Hughes) March 31, 2025
Look, sometimes you make the right move, and it just doesn’t work out.
Knowing what we know now, I think it’s very difficult to argue that trading for Rodgers was the right bet. The entire premise of the trade was a giant miscalculation. The Jets overestimated how close the team was to the Super Bowl. They also overestimated how much Rodgers had left in the tank. They conveniently ignored pretty blatant warning signs. The team had major holes. Rodgers was 39 and coming off his worst season at the time of the trade. And most of the time when you try to microwave a contender, it fails.
If you lose the AFC Championship Game by a field goal to the Chiefs, there is a real discussion to be had about the team taking a shot to win the Super Bowl. When you go 5-12, you never really took a chance to win the Super Bowl. It was an enormous miscalculation as to where the team and Rodgers actually were.
Until Woody Johnson can actually own his failures and attempt to change for the better, we are likely to be spinning our wheels here.