Same old Jets! Haason Reddick's contract dispute shows continued ineptitude by the franchise
New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, right, talks with general manager Joe Douglas at the NFL football team's training facility in Florham Park, N.J., Wednesday, May 31, 2023. Juggling rosters has become a strategic art for NFL general managers. Teams enter training camp with a maximum of 90 players, who work through long, hot practices trying to prove they should be among the 53 on the active roster heading into the regular season. Credit: AP/Seth Wenig
Just when you think the bungling Jets have cleaned all the egg off their face from years of public embarrassments, along comes another hen.
This time it’s Haason Reddick, who is clucking to the tune of a trade demand while holding out from training camp.
Such situations at their essence are not all that abnormal. There are plenty of high-profile players around the league — Brandon Aiyuk, Ja’Marr Chase, CeeDee Lamb, Matthew Judon — who are either not with their team this summer in search of a new deal, or to use the latest trendy maneuver, holding in, which is basically showing up for work so as not to be fined but not actually working.
What makes this negotiation so unique, so mismanaged, so Jets-like, is that it could all have been avoided four-and-a-half months ago when the Jets traded a 2026 conditional third-round pick to the Eagles in exchange for the Pro Bowl edge rusher who has 50 1/2 sacks over the last four seasons. It was clear to just about everyone around the league that the reason Reddick was even on the market was because he wanted a new deal, which the Eagles were not going to give him. The Jets, though, completed the trade without hammering out an updated contract, apparently convinced that Reddick would play on the existing contract that would pay him a non-guaranteed $14.25 million this season.
To be fair to the Jets, Reddick and his camp certainly gave that impression when he arrived in Florham Park to take his physical and meet with the media in March.
“Whatever happens, I’m going to be happy for it, I’m going to give my all no matter what, that’s just who I am as a person,” Reddick said at the time.
But then, he failed to show up for the voluntary offseason workouts. Then the mandatory minicamp. Then the start of training camp. And then on Monday, three weeks and about $1.7 million in fines after he was expected to report to his new team for the summer, he told the Jets he wants a new, new team and made his second trade request in six months.
To be fair to reality, though, the Jets should have seen this coming and hammered out a new deal with Reddick before the trade with the Eagles was completed. And if they did make an offer during that period, as has been reported, that makes it even worse! That means they knew Reddick's contract desires were not in line with their own and still pushed the trade through. Here's the way such business maneuvers typically get done in the NFL: The contract terms are agreed to (with the approval of the trading team of course because we can’t have tampering in the NFL!) and then the trade is finalized.
That’s what the Giants did when they acquired Brian Burns from the Panthers this offseason. That’s what every team does.
The Jets, for whatever reason, didn’t.
So now the two sides are stuck in an ugly, awkward stalemate — a game of chicken, to add more eggs to the narrative. Reddick wants to be traded and general manager Joe Douglas has issued a statement saying that ain’t happening. The Jets seem amenable to reworking Reddick’s contract, but only if Reddick reports to camp. Reddick, it appears, ain’t doing that without a new deal. And round and round they go.
The biggest guffaws over this have to be coming from Philadelphia, where general manager Howie Roseman — a close friend of Douglas', at least up to this point — must be is hysterics over not only trading a business headache to the Jets but also swooping in to sign Bryce Huff away from the Jets in free agency — a move that made the Reddick deal more necessary from a Jets' perspective.
This isn’t the first time the Jets have been jilted by a would-be acquisition. It’s actually a long tradition for them that goes back to having Bill Belichick quit as their head coach on the day he was supposed to be introduced for that position. They thought they were going to sign Kirk Cousins to be their quarterback in 2018 before he took an offer from the Vikings. They were spurned by linebacker Anthony Barr in 2019 when the Pro Bowler actually agreed to a deal with them and then reneged to return to Minnesota.
That’s to say nothing of the on-the-field foibles that have branded the Jets as an organization that can’t get out of its own way.
It seemed as if the Jets had put an end to such humiliating practices and were heading toward legitimacy though, especially when they traded for and then later renegotiated a deal with Aaron Rodgers last offseason. Maybe the civility of that process led them to believe they could do it again with Reddick.
Naturally, being the Jets, they could not.
How this one ends up is unclear. The Jets certainly are counting on Reddick from a football perspective, having lost Huff and dealing John Franklin-Myers to the Broncos. They have a strong defense that Reddick would make much stronger. And Douglas made it airtight that they won’t trade him. But they also aren’t losing anything if Reddick never shows up; his salary for this season isn’t guaranteed and if he doesn’t play, well, the conditions on the conditional pick they sent to Philly certainly won’t be met. From a purely business standpoint, Reddick has the most to lose.
Usually it’s the player who winds up blinking as the regular season and the reality of missing paychecks approaches.
But these are the Jets. They are the Jets no matter who is in charge. And if their history has taught us anything about such dealings it’s to expect, not just the worst, but the most unexpectedly flagrant outcome . . . and that they should get ready to eat some big omelets.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.