Things are Going So Well With the Jets They're Offering Buyouts to 2/3 of Their Employees for 'Cultural' Reasons

New York Daily News. Getty Images.

You might think that when a franchise is achieving near-record levels of futility, that they're coming off a two-year period in which they handed complete control over to a 40 year old player, only to have to move on from the coach, GM and the player, that ownership would take a long, probing look in the mirror to figure out where they went so horribly, horribly wrong. Especially when said ownership's entire family have been steering this dysfunctional ship into every iceberg imaginable for generations now:

In Woody Johnson's case, you'd be 100% right. He hired experts to advise him on exactly what he and his family have been doing wrong with the Jets. To identify the problems and make the hard choices to correct them. And that study has at last put its finger on the ones responsible for the failure. 

Everybody else. 

Sports Business Journal - Approximately 170 of the N.Y. Jets’ 250 employees must decide today whether to accept a buyout offer issued earlier this month, a deal that would give the most senior employees more than 18 months of full salary and health insurance if they leave.

The offer was sent to all non-contractual employees, sources said. There is no financial target in mind, and there will not be involuntary job cuts if fewer people take the buyout than hoped, a source close to the team said.

Management’s motivation is cultural, not financial, sources said, hoping that the offer causes workers to reflect on their long-term career goals, personal interests, and whether they fit with the franchise’s. The buyouts follow a recently completed “comprehensive study” of the organization and growth priorities, a spokesperson said. 

“The exercise has identified opportunities to operate, align, and innovate more effectively,” the spokesperson said. …

The buyouts come after the Jets’ ninth consecutive losing season, and their 14th straight without a playoff appearance, the NFL’s longest drought. In December, The Athletic wrote a lengthy article about the team’s dysfunction that called owner Woody Johnson the “root” of the problems.

Despite the on-field futility and growing chorus of criticism for Johnson, the Jets’ business staff is generally well-regarded around the NFL for maintaining attendance and growing sponsorship revenue despite the long losing streak.

That was time and Woody's money well spent. That is, if your goal is to make yourself look like a victim of circumstances in your own organization and not, say, the person who's been making all the wrong calls. If your intention is to deflect away from thee fact you've been taking personnel advice from your shitty, incompetent Nepo Baby son:

… instead of addressing the actual problems, then this is the perfect approach. 

Yup, it's all "cultural." The fault of two out of every three of your staff. Get rid of them, and the problems practically fix themselves. Like they always say, a fish rots from the tail. Rid yourself of Doug from Business Development and Stephanie the

Premium Seating Sales Manager, and those double digit L totals will start turning into playoff berths faster than you can say "Buttfumble." 

So well done, Johnson family. On behalf of the fan bases of the other AFC East teams, congratulations on this house cleaning. Here's looking forward to nine more losing seasons and the next 14 without a playoff game. Whatever you do, don't ever sell. If the Jets didn't exist, we'd have had to invent them.