Mike Tannenbaum: Jets in better spot after trading for Packers great this time
CLEVELAND, OH - AUGUST 7, 2008: Quarterback Brett Favre #4 of the New York Jets holds up his game jersey in between Chairman and CEO Woody Johnson (left) and general manager Mike Tannenbaum (right) during a press conference to introduce him to the media after his trade from the Green Bay Packers prior to a game with the Cleveland Browns on Thursday, August 7, 2008 at Cleveland Browns Stadium in Cleveland, Ohio. Brett Favre08-1209117 Credit: Diamond Images/Getty Images/Diamond Images
This already was going to be a busy week for Mike Tannenbaum. The NFL Draft is one of the most hectic times of the year for him as he juggles his various media responsibilities, providing insights on front-office theories and player evaluations.
On Monday, it became even more bananas.
That was when the framework for the Jets’ trade to acquire Aaron Rodgers from the Packers was disclosed. All of a sudden, Tannenbaum was thrust backward 15 years to when he was general manager of the Jets and the architect of a blockbuster deal to acquire a future Hall of Famer from Green Bay.
“Ten years from now, I am really looking forward to Joe Douglas having to comment on Jordan Love being traded to the Jets because he feels aggrieved and disappointed by how they treated him,” Tannenbaum told Newsday, joking about the current cast in this Broadway revival, the absurdity of the similarities and the preposterous potential for it to happen again in another generation or so.
There are enough similarities that it wasn’t just reporters who blew up Tannenbaum’s phone asking him what he thought about the Rodgers deal and what pitfalls that took place back in 2008 could be avoided. Jets owner Woody Johnson called hoping to pick his brain on the topic, too.
“I think you take each situation as it exists and you try to get better,” Johnson said this past week. “I talked to Mike Tannenbaum [Tuesday] and he was remembering back when that happened. That was a pretty interesting period, too. This is different, I think, in that it’s been a long time. I think we have a little more football knowledge that we had, perhaps, back then.”
Besides the eerie similarities — aging all-time great quarterback from Green Bay with a former first-round pick sitting behind him has his relationship with the organization begin to fray, leading to a divorce that is sealed with a trade to the Jets — Tannenbaum said there are several differences that should work in the Jets’ favor this time.
“The relationship with Nathaniel Hackett is really important because it gives him a really big leg up in knowing the offense,” Tannenbaum said of Rodgers’ relationship with the Jets’ new offensive coordinator.
They worked together in Green Bay for three seasons and Rodgers has spoken glowingly about their relationship and the role it played in his decision to come to the Jets.
When Favre came to the team, he knew no one.
Another difference?
“The time of the year cannot be understated,” Tannenbaum said. “We got Brett in August and it was, ‘How do we build this thing on the fly?’ We’re trying to beat Tom Brady and they have all these years and years of experience together that we don’t have. How can we close the gap as quickly as possible?”
The answer is they couldn’t.
Eric Mangini, the head coach of the Jets in 2008, pointed out another difference — one that might not bode well for this year's team.
“Brett loved playing football,” he told Newsday. “He was like a little kid when he was around the guys. It was palpable that he really enjoyed being there. It never felt like he was thinking about leaving. Aaron is going through his own journey trying to figure out ‘do I want to play football? Do I not want to play football?’ Aaron is trying to figure out what else he wants to do with his life and what the bigger picture is.”
Favre may have been retired in a more literal way before he was traded to the Jets, but the case can be made that he was less mentally retired upon his arrival than Rodgers was when he emerged from his recent darkness retreat and said he was “90%” ready to hang 'em up.
“I think for it to be successful, you want to have that same energy Brett came into our season with,” Mangini said. “I think the best Aaron Rodgers you get is one that is [ticked] off and has something to prove. When he had these last two MVP seasons, it was the Jordan Love pick, he was [ticked] about that, and then the next year was his contract, and he was [ticked] about that. Hopefully you get that angry, something-to-prove Aaron Rodgers. You get that guy, it could be great.”
It's hard to classify what that 2008 season was for the Jets, exactly. They started out 8-3 and had won five in a row, including an overtime victory over the hated Patriots, but Favre suffered an injury to his throwing arm and they lost four of their final five games.
Mangini was fired at the conclusion of the season even though he has said several times that he had assurances from Johnson that he would keep his job no matter how the year ended, even if the Jets went 0-16.
“It wasn’t something I wanted to do,” Mangini said in a 2016 radio interview with Colin Cowherd about his resistance to the idea of adding Favre before he was convinced and bought into the concept that was being pushed by Johnson. “This was an experiment, It was something we were going to do for the good of the organization. But then we were going to get back to the vision, the plan, the things we had committed to.”
They never did.
“When we got Favre, it worked great for about nine games and then he got injured and the wheels fell off,” Mangini said. “But at that point expectations had changed dramatically, so we went 9-7 and I got let go after a winning season.”
His advice to these Jets? “Figure out a way to keep Aaron’s throwing arm healthy all season long.”
Tannenbaum also had trouble defining that season as either a success or failure.
“Giannis [Antetokounmpo] has a point of view on that,” he said of the basketball star's viral speech this past week when asked if his season with the Milwaukee Bucks had been a failure. “When you speak to people like the Damien Woodys of the world, they tell you our ‘08 team was better in a lot of ways than ’09 [when the Jets went 9-7 with Rex Ryan and Mark Sanchez and advanced to the AFC Championship Game]. Obviously, the record turned out to be different, and if Brett didn’t get hurt, we’ll never know. We just felt we had an opportunity to get an all-time great and we couldn’t pass up that opportunity. We liked Chad Pennington a lot, he was a really great player for us, but we felt we had to try to hit a grand slam and go get Brett.”
Fifteen years later, the Jets again had the same itch.
“I’m optimistic,” Tannenbaum said of the Rodgers deal for the Jets. “I think Rodgers is a great player. Left tackle is a concern for all the obvious reasons, but they’ve done a really good job and laid a really strong foundation . . . You have a chance to get an all-time great at quarterback, you have to do that. Their quarterback play last year was horrific and it makes a ton of sense to make the trade.”
Despite putting in that call to Tannenbaum, Johnson said he isn’t very interested in the parallels between the Favre and Rodgers deals.
“I really don’t think in those terms,” he said. “I’m looking forward . . . I think you take each situation as it exists and you try to get better.”
Mangini thinks this move will benefit the Jets, mostly for the same reasons Tannenbaum listed regarding timing and familiarity.
“From a launching point, they should be light years away from where we were,” he said.
He also noted that his Jets team had issues making the cold-hearted jump from a productive and very popular quarterback in Chad Pennington. There are no such ties to Zach Wilson on or off the field.
“That’s going to be radically different in this locker room,” Mangini said. “Now all those guys will realize they have a chance. Everyone I would imagine would respond positively to that . . . It’s such a bigger jump from where they were to where they are now versus where we were with Chad to where we went with Brett. That’s huge. There were some negative feelings in the locker room [in 2008]. That wasn’t Brett’s fault, it wasn’t Chad’s fault. It’s just the way it played out. I don’t think they are facing that now.”
But if it doesn’t work for the Jets? Mangini said he knows from experience that it won’t be the owner who takes the fall.
“I’m sure Robert [Saleh] understands the ante has changed,” he said. “He might not. But it has . . . I lived it.”
The Jets lived it, too. At least Johnson did. He and his brother Christopher are two of the few anywhere in the organization who remain from 2008. They lived through the Favre season.
The question for them now: Did the Jets learn anything from it?
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.
