Jets fire Joe Douglas, who had to go but leaves behind a complicated legacy

Less than two weeks ago, general manager Joe Douglas stood near the entrance to the Jets’ practice facility and said he wasn’t worried about his future. He said it wasn’t too late for the Jets, at 3-6, to turn things around.
But even as he said it, it felt like Douglas knew that his fate was already sealed. And on Tuesday afternoon, after two losses knocked the Jets from playoff contention, the inevitable became the reality: Douglas was fired.
This wasn’t a shock like Woody Johnson’s Week 5 decision to part with Robert Saleh, who unlike Douglas was under contract through last year. Douglas and the Jets went into this season without a new contract, the implication being the Jets would need to finally make the playoffs for Douglas to get a seventh year. SNY first reported the Jets’ decision.
Any hope of that is gone before December after the Jets’ 3-8 start, and so are both Douglas and Saleh. Senior football advisor Phil Savage was named interim GM.
Douglas leaves behind a complicated legacy in five-plus years as the general manager. The team is undoubtedly more talented than it was when he took over in June of 2019, in the aftermath of the ugly split between then-coach Adam Gase and recently fired GM Mike Maccagnan.
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But Douglas never figured out how to assemble all that talent into a winning package, with the complementary personalities and play styles needed to come together and play consistently.
Douglas leaves the Jets with a 30-64 and that includes the 7-9 record in 2019 when the roster was assembled by Maccagnan.
Douglas has undoubtedly improved the talent on the roster since then. But the goal in the NFL isn’t to stack talent. It’s to build a team that can handle adversity and find a way to win. And the Jets never found a way to do that with Douglas running the football operation.
Douglas had the final say in the search that landed coach Robert Saleh in 2021. Saleh went 20-36 in three-plus seasons, twice leading the Jets to a 7-10 record.
Still, Douglas changed everything for the Jets by drafting cornerback Sauce Gardner, wide receiver Garrett Wilson and running back Breece Hall within a few hours of each other back in 2022. Less than a year later, quarterback Aaron Rodgers wanted to come to the Jets, who were suddenly playing in prime time. And it was Douglas who engineered the trade to get it done, and he pulled off the trade to land wide Davante Adams last month in a last-ditch effort to save the season.
But it wasn’t enough to overcome the big miss on quarterback Zach Wilson in 2021, or the tumultuous tenure of 2020 first-round pick offensive tackle Mekhi Becton, who never lived up to the brief promise he showed in his rookie year.
Douglas was supposed to turn the page to a new era for the Jets, and in a way he did. He was viewed as a home run hire when the Jets landed him. Despite a disastrous end to Maccagnan’s tenure, the Jets got Douglas to buy in and join their cause.
It was proof in that moment that top NFL talent believed in what the Jets were building. But there was also proof that Douglas wasn’t taking any chances: He made the Jets sign him to a six-year contract before taking the job.
Douglas got almost all six of those years and couldn’t dig the Jets out of their playoff drought. It wasn’t just bad decisions, there was lots of bad luck: Before his first game as GM, newly signed kicker Kaare Vedvik lost his ability to kick during warmups and the Jets lost linebacker C.J. Mosley at the end of the third quarter for most of the season, and then before Week 2 of his first year, quarterback Sam Darnold came down with mono.
And it kind of stayed that way, with the Jets losing Rodgers just four snaps into his first season here with a torn Achilles.
In the end, Douglas will leave the Jets more talented than they were when he got there, but it’s not clear if they’re much better off or closer to making something out of it.
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Andy Vasquez may be reached at [email protected].