Gamesmanship, thy name is Boomer, as the first question he asked Jets GM Joe Douglas during his appearance on the Boomer & Gio Show Wednesday was whether or not the New England Patriots would find a way to break the NFL's mandate of artificial crowd noise no louder than 81 decibels.
"Hah, we'll see," Douglas joked coyly. "I'm sure we'll have guys measuring that, so we'll find out."
It's a new era in the AFC East, and the Joe Douglas era is now in full effect, but it has the Jets entering 2020 with the third-most money left to spend under the salary cap – a cap that, Douglas notes, may change drastically, which is part of why the Jets are waiting to spend that money.
"We know exactly what the worst case scenario is, and it's going from $198 million to $175 million, but we're working to make sure we have the best plans from worst-case scenario on up," Douglas said. "Hopefully we'll fill in those blanks as we get closer to next year, but I think we have a pretty good plan moving forward."
The leader of that plan, for now, is quarterback Sam Darnold, whom Jets fans are surely hoping takes that leap into the franchise quarterback stratosphere in 2020. Douglas, for one, is confident he can.
"This is Sam's second year in the offense, and you can really see how much more comfortable he is in it now," Douglas said. "It's been really fun to see him grow off the field, too, and take on that leadership role of a franchise quarterback. Just watching how he communicates, how his teammates gravitate towards him, it's fun to watch."
Of course, talk later shifted to Jamal Adams – specifically Douglas' previous "Jet for Life" comment – but Douglas once again reiterated that the deal sending Adams to Seattle was too good to pass up.
"It was a tough decision, because he is a fantastic player. We knew mid-to-late June, we started having conversations with Seattle, and knew it was an aggressive pursuit," Douglas said. "It became a situation where we couldn't turn it down because it was going to help us for years to come. It's unfortunate to lose a good player, but at the end of the day, we felt this was the right thing to do for the New York Jets."
The GM didn't buy in to the social media aspect (he's not a big social media guy anyway), or any of the theatrics surrounding the deal, as influencing it in any way.
"There's a reason hose things were said and done; no one took it personally, it was just business, and it didn't affect our decision at all," Douglas said. "It just got to the point where the offer we got from Seattle was too good to pass up."
Douglas of course then dished about the rest of his current team and the state of the NFL, but the bottom line is that heading into Week 1, the Jets are rolling with what they have – and the GM is confident that the NFL will find a way to get to Week 17 and beyond.
"Right now I'm very confident – just with the protocols and procedures we have in place, our staff has done a great job implementing and following them down to a T," Douglas said. "We've all been getting tested and doing the right things inside and outside the building. No one has put anyone at risk with bad decisions off the field. We're in a good place now, and we have to keep those good decisions going."
Check out Douglas' entire call-in below, and as always, check out more on-demand audio from WFAN's morning show!
