Time for the Jets to take off with what Joe Douglas has put together for 2023
New York Jets general manager Joe Douglas. Credit: Noah K. Murray
Labor Day weekend isn’t just the unofficial end of summer.
It’s the unofficial end of the football offseason, too.
Oh sure, there still is plenty to do for general managers around the NFL as they scour waiver wires, manipulate practice squads and track the health of their roster. Then there is the trade deadline, which has become more active than in the past, at the end of October.
For the most part, though, teams are who they are at this point on the calendar. There may be some subtle shuffling that can be done, but the framework of each squad is pretty much set as September rolls around.
After eight solid months of assembling these Jets, general manager Joe Douglas can finally take a step back and appreciate the remarkable job he has done. Everything this team has needed, he has delivered for them, from a Hall of Fame quarterback who even he thought was an “unrealistic” goal when the 2022 season ended to an All-Pro running back as the final touch in these last few weeks.
He’s overseen the physical, mental and perceptual rehabilitation of Mekhi Becton when he could have easily washed his hands of the player. He added depth to an already vicious pass rush through the draft. He secured the long-term Jets future of the team’s – and perhaps the NFL’s -- best defensive lineman. And, most impressively, Douglas turned a franchise that was a punchline into a nearly unanimous contender.
Whew.
But now all he can do is sit back and see if it all comes together, just like the rest of us.
“I’m excited about the season,” Douglas said on Thursday. “But ultimately excitement does not win games. It’s preparation, execution and discipline that wins games.”
For that part, Douglas now has to hand off his creation to others and trust they will tend to it just as well as he has for most of this calendar year. If things go well, they may even carry it on a month or two into the next one.
Douglas always knew it would come to this. His experiences with Baltimore and Philadelphia teams that went to and won Super Bowls taught him about letting go and allowing the team to find its own path.
“I think the common denominator between those Super Bowl teams in Baltimore and Philly was it started in the locker room,” he said. “It started with great leadership and it was a great combination of personalities. Just great people, I mean, great guys in those locker rooms. Those were player-driven locker rooms, just fantastic people and leaders.”
These Jets, he went on to say, have those same traits.
“You feel that chemistry when you walk out there, when you come into the building every day. There is really good chemistry. I know you guys have heard me say that the most important room is the locker room, and I feel like this locker room is in a good place.”
The alpha in there, of course, is Aaron Rodgers. He wears that role about as comfortably as any of the T-shirts that he’s probably had since before some of his teammates were even born.
That was what Douglas was waiting to see after he pulled off the greatest quarterback coup in Jets history. He knew Rodgers could still play, maybe not at an MVP level but certainly much higher than what the Jets had gotten the last few seasons. He knew Rodgers was smart and would be able to decipher defenses.
What he couldn’t quite bank on was whether the soon-to-be 40-year-old Rodgers would be able to connect with an otherwise fairly young roster in a very short period of time.
This summer showed Douglas that he could.
“I go back to the same word: Authenticity,” Douglas said. “Him being able to get real with these guys and build these relationships with first- and second-year players who grew up watching him play. But he’s able to relate to them, have the special handshakes, and have these real bonds with these guys. It’s been fun to watch.”
So now he hands the keys over to Rodgers and Robert Saleh and the rest of the Jets he has assembled.
Douglas deserves to kick back a bit this weekend. It’s been a long, hard, sometimes breathless sprint to get to this point. There were gambles and risks, hard decisions and no-brainers. Now it’s just about over for him.
Unofficially, that is. Just like the summer.
He’s given the Jets his best efforts. Now all they have to do is give theirs for it to pay off.
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.
