Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Freakin’ Douglas has entered the building. So, take the cotton out of your ears and stuff it in your mouth.
Don’t speak, just pay attention and you will inevitably learn something. Because when JD is around, class is in session.
The New York Jets are riding a four-game winning streak that has them sitting with a record of five wins to just two losses. In typical Jets fashion, the run of good fortune seemed to come to a screeching halt with the news of season ending injuries to our ROY candidate Breece Hall and All-Pro caliber OL Alijah Vera-Tucker.
Damn you, football gods!
You probably could not name two players on the Jets that have been more integral to our newfound success in 2022 than both Hall and AVT. To say this is a gut punch would be a severe understatement.
The hopes and dreams of Jets fans far and wide smashed like broken glass into tiny little pieces. How could we recover from this news?
Well, have no fear Jets fans – Joe Douglas is in charge.
Our G.M., moving swiftly and with authority worked to quell some of the nerves and the anxiety of the New York Jets kingdom. Seemingly before Robert Salah’s sullen press conference had ended and disbanded, JD swung a deal with the Jacksonville Jaguars for 24-year-old running back James Robinson.
Robinson, playing in his third NFL season was an undrafted free agent who played his college ball at Illinois State. He already has a 1,000-yard season under his belt with a lifetime 4.55 yards per carry.
Robinson has the one-cut skill set to really excel in Mike LaFlauer’s zone-blocking scheme. Excellent in pass pro and adept with his hands and route running, Robinson is the real deal.
Although he’s not Breece Hall – quite frankly, is there even another Breece in the league? Probably not, but the addition of Robinson offers fills a void that quickly came about with the Breece Hall injury.
So your saying that there is a chance the season isn’t done?.
“Hope” is the message being conveyed from One Jets Drive. A move such as the one that Joe Douglas completed yesterday is quite a tone-setter. How can one little transaction hold so much depth and weight?
Many differing conclusions could be drawn. Let’s take a deeper look at the messages (both good and bad) that JD and the New York Jets are transmitting to the team, the fan base, and the rest of the NFL.
1: Joe Douglas is a believer in this roster.
The Jets are buyers at the deadline and not sellers? Joe has been active at the deadline in years past, but more so as a seller.
In 2019, we moved Leo Williams for picks & followed that up in 2020 by acquiring more future draft capital in exchange for Steve McLendon & Avery Williamson. In 2021, the Jets swung a deal with the Chiefs for Laurent Duvernay-Tardiff by dealing the expiring contract of backup TE Daniel Brown.
Joe is clearly not afraid to pull the trigger if both the cost and the situation are in alignment. In 2019-2021, the situation was “Operation Rebuild” and the cost was older veteran players with expiring contracts who were not going to be brought back the following year.
The roster was stripped down to the studs and JD and his brass acquired good, young players for the foundation of the roster.
2022 is different. The rebuild is in its final stage – the stage where all the pieces come together into a viable team playing meaningful games late into the season. A roster that one can believe in.
Dom C.
And it is evident that Joe Douglas believes.
The decision could have been made to fold up and say wait until next year. Let’s be honest, half of Jets Twitter did just that. If he chose to waive the white flag, JD could have sold off pieces to the highest bidder accumulating even more future draft capital and extend the rebuild even further.
He didn’t. Instead, he showed the conviction in the team that has played their butts off to a 5-2 record, confidence in the coaching staff that has raised the bar and levels of expectation and provided hope to a fan base that has been dragged through the mud for way too long.
There was nobody you can trade for that would be able to replace the likes of Breece hall or AVT, but Joe Douglas put on his big boy pants and made big boy decisions: that the Jets are going to do everything in their power to keep this train moving along.
He believes in this roster, and he makes very hard for the fans not to believe in him.
2: Joe Douglas is a realist
Social media was chock full of fan responses to the news of Breece Hall’s season ending ACL tear – “damn that sucks, at least we have Michael Carter.”
As a staunch supporter of Michael Carter, I concur. He epitomizes what you want in a player – selflessness, personality, positivity. The 23-year-old is a building block of the culture change away from the ragged moniker “Same Old Jets”.
JD added Carter in the 2021 draft, when a handful of these “foundation player” pieces come from. Joe D has not brought in a player who doesn’t fit in the mold of his vision.
Michael Carter was a shining light in the midst of a very dark 2021 season. There were a lot of negatives throughout the season with some fleeing admirable moments, with Carter’s attitude and production being one of them.
Last season, Carter rushed for 639 yards on 147 carries for a very respectable 4.4 yards per carry. He added in another 325 yards on 36 receptions and crossed the end zone four times. All in all, not too shabby for a 22-year-old rookie.
To an extent, I believe that Joe Douglas feels happy to have Michael Carter on the roster. I mean, why wouldn’t you? Michael Carter is committed to his craft. He tries to get better every single day.
With all that said, Joe Douglas is a realist.
With all the accolades, the good press received and the production that Michael Carter has provided so far in his career – Joe Douglas has now moved forward on two separate occasions to bring another running back into the stable.
Is this a knock on Carter the player? Not necessarily, Joe Douglas just understands that Michael Carter is not your every down traditional bell-cow running back.
This is not new. Carter has paired up with a running mate in the backfield almost his entire life, stemming back to his time at the University of North Carolina and even back at Navarre High School.
Joe Douglas loves his guys, and Michael Carter definitively is one of them – but he is not one to let his emotions dictate what is best for the New York Jets. That mentality defines a leader…and a realist.
3: Joe Douglas is very good at his job
“Trader Joe” is back at it again.
This trade is so good on so many different levels and shows yet again that Douglas is playing chess while the other NFL GM’s are out there playing checkers.
First off, James Robinson is a talented running back. His skill set counterbalances the other running backs in the room exceptionally well.
He offers a downhill, aggressive one-cut and go style that fits the zone blocking scheme exceptionally well. He can get the dirty yards in short-yardage or goal line situations.
Ladies and gentlemen, let this sink in: Joe Douglas just acquired Arian Foster 2.0 in essence, for Blake Cashman.
Joe D can officially drop the mic.
There is more than just the player that makes this deal so smart and forward thinking.
Robinson is in the last year of his rookie deal and will be a restricted free agent at the end of 2022. If they want to keep Robinson for 2023, they will have to place a tender on him.
The original round tender was $2,390,000 in 2022 (per Sport Trac).
Here is a quick explanation of how original round tenders work:
When an original round tender is used on a player AND that player signs an offer sheet with another team, the original team is put on the spot: match the offer or let him go. If the team chooses not to match the offer sheet, they receive a compensation pick equivalent to the original round the player was drafted.
Considering that Robinson was a UDFA, there would be no draft pick compensation. The Jets would get right of first refusal and that’s it. However, the cost for the right of first refusal tender is less: $1,790,000 in 2022.
That cost may go up as the salary cap increases in 2023. Nonetheless, JD and the Jets get at least 10 games to decide in a +/- $2 million contract for James Robinson.
Adding Robinson at that price would give the Jets a total of $5.1 million locked into the RB position in 2023. With an estimated 2023 cap of $225 million, we are talking 3% total investment for your entire RB room. For comparison’s sake, the Dolphins are at $6.6 million in 2023 to just Chase Edmunds.
There is too, the Breece Hall factor that plays into it. An ACL tear in mid-October does not assure that we will see Breece on the first half of 2023. When he does come back, we cannot expect the Breece we loved for the first seven weeks this season.
A 24-year-old, relatively cheap insurance policy. One that fits our offensive scheme and compliments the players already in the stable.
All for the price of one Blake Cashman? Yes, it is sufficient to say that Joe Douglas gets this whole GM thing.
Joe Douglas signed a six-year deal with the Jets to captain the ship. He knew that the waters would be rough to start, but smother sailing would be on the horizon. More than halfway through his contract, JD is showing what a competent, astute GM in the NFL looks like.
Douglas has built this team with a foundation to succeed for years to come.
He brought light back into the eyes of this dreary, seemingly destitute organization.
JD has given the fans something to smile about.
Every move he makes solidifies that Joe Douglas is a believer in these New York Jets. For what it’s worth, we feel the same way about you, Joe.
Oh, how dark it was before the dawn…
Let’s go Jets…