PFT -- The Jets were very aggressive in Mike Maccagnan’s first offseason as the team’s General Manager, signing Darrelle Revis, Marcus Gilchrist, Antonio Cromartie and Buster Skrine as free agents and trading for Brandon Marshall and Ryan Fitzpatrick on their way to a 10-win season.
Those 10 wins didn’t come with a playoff spot, however, and some might have thought the Jets would approach this offseason just as aggressively in order to get what eluded them last year. Things haven’t played out that way, though.
There’s less cap space to use for outside acquisitions and the team’s stances toward giving new deals to Fitzpatrick, who is an unrestricted free agent, and defensive end Muhammad Wilkerson, who was franchise tagged, have shown much more restraint than the Jets showed last season.
“In a perfect world, we’d like to potentially compete for the playoffs,” Maccagnan said, via the New York Daily News. “I don’t necessarily view that as a benchmark of success or failure. The goal is not to just sort of mortgage the future. We haven’t sort of leveraged everything to try to make one big run … and at the end of the day, have to try to tear it all down … It’s not like we feel like we have to go all-in and just do it this year.”
Maccagnan’s confidence that he doesn’t need to win big this year explains why the team hasn’t rushed to meet Fitzpatrick’s contract demands and why they were open to trading up to the first pick in the draft before the Rams struck a deal with the Titans. One imagines he has that confidence because he knows what owner Woody Johnson’s expectations are for 2016 and, therefore, isn’t taking too big a risk with his job security.
For a team with veterans in key roles on both sides of the ball, it might not be too much longer before a playoff run is considered a must for Maccagnan to remain on the franchise’s rudder.
Those 10 wins didn’t come with a playoff spot, however, and some might have thought the Jets would approach this offseason just as aggressively in order to get what eluded them last year. Things haven’t played out that way, though.
There’s less cap space to use for outside acquisitions and the team’s stances toward giving new deals to Fitzpatrick, who is an unrestricted free agent, and defensive end Muhammad Wilkerson, who was franchise tagged, have shown much more restraint than the Jets showed last season.
“In a perfect world, we’d like to potentially compete for the playoffs,” Maccagnan said, via the New York Daily News. “I don’t necessarily view that as a benchmark of success or failure. The goal is not to just sort of mortgage the future. We haven’t sort of leveraged everything to try to make one big run … and at the end of the day, have to try to tear it all down … It’s not like we feel like we have to go all-in and just do it this year.”
Maccagnan’s confidence that he doesn’t need to win big this year explains why the team hasn’t rushed to meet Fitzpatrick’s contract demands and why they were open to trading up to the first pick in the draft before the Rams struck a deal with the Titans. One imagines he has that confidence because he knows what owner Woody Johnson’s expectations are for 2016 and, therefore, isn’t taking too big a risk with his job security.
For a team with veterans in key roles on both sides of the ball, it might not be too much longer before a playoff run is considered a must for Maccagnan to remain on the franchise’s rudder.
