Wins not evaluation

Edition #769

☀️ Good morning ☕

I hope everyone had a great Christmas. Illness struck the Wyatt-Hupton household at the worst time unfortunately, so I’ve had a sick 19-month-old and a sick wife. Not a great combination but we still managed to enjoy the day.

We have just two weeks left in the 2024 season and then the fun really begins. We have a few notes today to jumpstart TJW again after our mini break.

🟡 Todd Downing met with the media and he was asked why Malachi Corley was not getting more run considering the team record - “First of all, our priority is winning games, not evaluation. He certainly has gone through the season of wanting more opportunities, but I think he's learning to handle that in better and more mature ways." This kind of thing drives me insane. Corley may have had some maturity issues, but at this point it’s absolutely about evaluation. If Corley has shown progress then he should be rewarded for it with extra opportunities. I’m not calling for him to play 75% of snaps, but against the Rams we had Lazard play 51/69 snaps, that’s 74%. Jets have to plan long-term, getting Corley 30-40% of the snaps at the expense of Lazard makes sense.

🟢 Downing was also asked about Garrett Wilson - "When we only score nine points, we got to look at ways to get our playmakers the ball more. I feel like it is been a balance that we've done a pretty decent job of throughout the course of the year and, obviously, we want to get our guys involved as much as we can." I made this point on X over Christmas but I’ll make it again here. Wilson is the 4th most targeted receiver in football entering week 17, only Lamb, Nabers and Chase have more. If Wilson is complaining about the # of targets he hasn’t got a leg to stand on. I think his issue is the quality of targets and maybe his priority in the QB read process, he’s burning guys and not getting the balls. But most of all, I think the guy is just sick and tired of losing.

⚫ Olu Fashanu will unfortunately miss the final two games of the season with an injury to his plantar fascia. The good news is that it won’t require surgery, he’ll be fully healed way before training camp and he showed enough this year to make you comfortable going into 2025 with him as your left tackle.

🔴 Aaron Rodgers gave a curt “no” when he was asked if he’d spoken to Woody Johnson recently. When he was then asked if he believes Woody wants him back in 2025, he simply said "You should ask Woody,". Rodgers has said that he’d be willing to mentor a young QB, he’s be open to taking a pay cut and spoke about how it would mean a lot to him if he was asked back as it would indicate they see him "as an important part of helping the culture, the changeover, whatever they do at head coach and helping the next wave of New York Jets. ... But if they don't, again, no offense at all will be taken."

🟣 Rodgers did take a dig at Woody Johnson on the Pat McAfee show though, stating that he’d “never been released by a teenager” which is a reference to The Athletics' piece which stated that Woody is heavily influenced by the opinions of his teenage son. I don’t know Woody personally, but he doesn’t strike me as someone who would take too kindly to this kind of ribbing.

🔵 The Jets made a string of moves this week ahead of the game against the Bills.
Played Olu Fashanu on IR
Signed Kicker Greg Joseph & Defensive end Kameron Cline to the practice squad
Signed Safety Jarius Monroe to the active roster
Released tight end Neal Johnson from the practice squad

🟠 ESPN had an interesting report on Christmas Day that stated that Pete Carroll would be interested in returning to the sideline next year and specifically listed the Chicago Bears. I had Pete Carroll right at the top of my list of preferred Head Coach candidates and while it doesn’t seem he’s interested in the Jets job, his interest in the Bears position could have a filter down effect on other candidates like Ben Johnson. So it’s certainly worth watching.

My thought for today’s newsletter was to try and answer the question:

“How attractive is the New York Jets job for potential candidates?”

According to ESPN, the answer to that question is ‘not very’.