Who's the worst owner in New York?
When I listen to WFAN, I hear quite a large number of complaints about how our favorite teams are run. We're now into the eighth straight year in which the city and surrounding area hasn't seen a championship. That's the longest drought in over a century. Several of those occupying the highest office on these teams are facing the fans' wrath.
The ineptitude competition is intense, but I think I can narrow it down to a three-team race between the Knicks, Mets and Jets.
And in my view, the Jets' Johnson brothers are head and shoulders above the rest in terms of incompetence.
They combine the miserliness of Mets owner Fred Wilpon with the utter cluelessness of James Dolan, who has run the Knicks into the ground for the last 20-odd years with his erratic behavior.
Christopher Johnson has been in charge since older brother Woody was named Ambassador to the United Kingdom in 2017. Christopher is directly responsible for the tragi-comedy that has been playing out at One Jets Drive in Florham Park this offseason, with the latest act the firing of general manager Mike Maccagnan and V.P. of player personnel Brian Heimerdinger last week.
The front office sources in Manish Mehta's articles in the Daily News all sounded similar, noting that Johnson was a decent guy who "just doesn't know what he's doing."
Let's review Johnson's stumbles that preceded last week's executions:
First, Johnson should have relieved head coach Todd Bowles immediately following the Jets' embarrassing 41-10 thrashing by the lowly Bills at home on November 11. Reporters who saw Johnson afterward noted how he was fuming at the result. Gang Green was heading into a bye week, making it the perfect opportunity to make a change.
Johnson demurred, probably because there was no one on Bowles' staff who was prepared to step in on even an interim basis to play out the season. That itself should have been a huge indictment of the Bowles regime. Head coaches need quality assistants to function. Instead, Bowles' failure to attract an experienced staff likely saved his job for the last six weeks.
After waiting until the end of the season to ax Bowles, Johnson then realized he'd be in an awkward position if he similarly decided to terminate Maccagnan. You see, in the Jets' organizational structure, both the GM and coach report separately to Johnson. If Johnson were to replace both simultaneously, he'd have to outsource the search to some third party, like he did when hiring Maccagnan and Bowles in 2015 and GM John Idzik in 2013. He's a dilettante, not a football junkie who knows where to look for executive talent.
Instead, Maccagnan was given a reprieve and advised Johnson in the process that led to the hiring of new head coach Adam Gase.
Everyone assumed that since Maccagnan was then given carte blanche to retool the roster in free agency and the draft, that was the end of the drama.
We were wrong.
Johnson fired his GM and then lied about it to the media. He lied about Gase's involvement in the conflict and, according to Mehta's source, he lied about how "embedded" he was in the office to observe the dysfunction. He was at the Jets' facility for less than two weeks in the four months since Gase was hired, Mehta tweeted.
In the six days since, Gase, who insisted he only wants to coach, has made a handful of personnel moves as acting GM, including trading Maccagnan's 2016 first-round pick Darron Lee and cutting 2017 fifth-rounder Jordan Leggett.
Who in their right mind would want to step onto this ship now? This is a circus. I don't know who leaked Peyton Manning's name, but that's laughable. Just because Gase worked well with Manning when he was an assistant in Denver? I'm sure there are many around the league who claim to have had a good working relationship with Manning.
The bottom line is that no one should trust Johnson to get this right. Just like the season ticket holders who purchased PSLs shouldn't have trusted that the Johnson's would protect their investments. These days, a fan who paid the Johnson's PSL extortion could easily be sitting next to someone who didn't.
Look, Dolan and Wilpon are deserving candidates for the worst owner dishonor. However, I hear Knicks and Mets fans express hope every year that there's at least a plan for eventual success.
The Jets? They're hopeless, thanks to the Johnson's squeezing every last drop out of their fans every year.
For a FAN's perspective of the Nets, Devils and Jets, follow Steve on Twitter @SteveLichtenst1.
