Jets take mantle of NFL’s dysfunction junction, fire GM and VP of Player Personnel, make new head coach acting GM

Hey, remember when the Raiders sent most of their scouting department home a week before the draft? That bombshell had the NFL world in quite a frenzy for a few minutes there. And we were talking about changing out a scouting department that belonged to the previous GM here. Aside from the mistrust the Raiders front office had in them, there wasn’t a whole lot that was groundbreaking.

The big moves the Raiders made came months ago. They let go of GM Reggie McKenzie along with his assistant Joey Clinkscales and brought in Mike Mayock as the next GM. Most of this was done in January. Two months ahead of free agency, and three months ahead of the draft. That’s standard operating procedure.

Then there’s the Jets.

Oh, the Jets. Who let their GM Mike Maccagnan go along with VP of Player Personnel Brian Heimerdinger go as well... in May.

What’s strange about this is obviously the timing. You don’t do this now. You don’t let these guys build a team throughout the offseason and then say “Thanks, byeeee!” And the Jets were reeeally busy this offseason.

New head coach Adam Gase apparently was not on board with the spending spree the Jets went on in free agency.

Now with Maccagnan and Heimerdinger out, Gase has been bumped to interim GM just five months after landing the head coaching job. Quite a series of events. And if you don’t think a head coach being given that kind of power so quickly doesn’t mean much, you have clearly forgotten the trades Hue Jackson made in the months following Al Davis’s death.

When Jon Gruden was hired as head coach last year, he had two logical choices. He could bring his own GM immediately or stick with Reggie McKenzie for a season before doing so. He opted for the latter and late in the season McKenzie was notified he was to be let go, so he stepped down a bit early in a lost season.

You could argue that Gruden was the unofficial GM based on the personnel decisions that were made in his first offseason — some of which were highly questionable — but he didn’t come in with a machete to the front office and even when McKenzie stepped down, he didn’t name himself interim or acting GM. That title was given to Shaun Herock.

Besides, Gruden was hired to a 10-year deal to shake things up, so McKenzie’s exit was inevitable. That’s not what Gase was brought in to do.

Mike Mayock was hired as GM the day after the season, giving him time to acclimate to the job. He kept McKenzie’s scouting department through free agency and the pre-draft process for continuity. Since the draft was over, he’s been hiring replacements.

Aside from the shock and awe that he told most of those scouts to go home a week before the draft was mostly following a tweet from Ian Rapoport who had a scout source who he followed even so far as telling him when they had gotten on the bus for the airport. Rapoport was a bit more surprised at this news.