Broadway Joe
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- Mar 19, 2019
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New Jets coach Adam Gase clearly won the power struggle with just-fired General Manager Mike Maccagnan.
But it seems the seeds of the discord between them were sown during draft meetings, when Gase didn’t have much of a voice and Maccagnan didn’t offer him the chance to make it heard.
As detailed by Manish Mehta of the New York Daily News, the rift between Gase and Maccagnan became apparent during preparation for the draft, when Maccagnan didn’t invite the new coach to offer much input into scouting.
It’s reasonable for a coach to offer a template for what he’s looking for in prospects to do things particular to a scheme, but coaches are by job description parachuting into this process late, so it’s reasonable to scouts to be protective of the corners they’ve been working for months. Maccagnan took the same approach with Todd Bowles, but Gase apparently bristled at the treatment.
“It pissed Adam off,” a team source said. “Mike didn’t want him to speak up too much. It’s a weird philosophy.”
Gase would share his thoughts with Maccagnan in smaller meetings, but by and large, the draft meetings were conducted without much input from coaches.
As a result, Gase largely washed his hands of the process. As they were setting up for the three days of picking players in April, Gase found that the seat reserved for him next to CEO Christopher Johnson was within range of the “war room” camera they had in place for the weekend.
“He literally took his seat and moved it [out of camera view],” a current team employee that was in the room said. “That was extreme.”
That’s one way of putting it. Passive-aggressive would be another mild version.
Of course, Gase now has a draft class of guys he can say he didn’t sign off on, which gives him some insulation if things go bad. But the fact such an organizational mismatch was allowed to continue through the draft is a failure that falls at the feet of Johnson — and the top-down dysfunction that has been the franchise’s trademark doesn’t seem to be letting up any time soon. (And could lead to Johnson trying for a Hail Mary.)