Blueprint For Success: How the Jets were built (and what the Miami Dolphins can learn)

This is the eighth in a series that examines how Miami’s 2019 opponents built their rosters, and what lessons the Dolphins can glean as they build theirs.

Team: New York Jets.

Coach: Adam Gase (first season).

General manager: Joe Douglas (first season).

Team owner: Woody and Christopher Johnson.

Franchise value: $3.2 billion.

2018 record: 4-12 (last in the AFC East).

Last playoff appearance: 2010 (lost in the AFC Championship Game).

Last Super Bowl championship: 1968.

Total 2019 payroll: $201.6 million (seventh).

Total 2019 AAV: $181.6 million (21st).

Salary cap space: $14.1 million (16th).

Dead money: $25.8 million (eighth most).

Percentage of homegrown players: 34.

Overview: The Jets roster looks exactly as you’d expect if you fired your head coach, hired another one, kept your general manager and allowed him to spend an ungodly sum of money in free agency and run the draft with next to input from your new head coach, only to have the head coach and owner turn on your GM and get him fired, and then the new GM and coach go to work blowing up the roster the last GM poorly constructed. Yes, the Jets put the fun in dysfunction. It’s crazy to think that the Jets allowed Mike Maccagnan to dole out $122 million in free agents eight months ago, only to can him when they realized that wasn’t the brightest ideas. And now New York is stuck with C.J. Mosley (five years, $85 million), Le’Veon Bell (four years, $52.2 million), Jamison Crowder (three years, $28. 5 million) and more probably through at least 2020, unless they want to self-inflict massive salary cap pain. Making matters worse, none of these big-ticket signings has appreciably moved the needle. Mosley, who’s fully guaranteed $16 million next year, has appeared in just two games this season due to a groin injury. He might not play again until September. Bell is guaranteed $13 million in 2020; he ranks 28th in rushing (349 yards), last among qualifying running backs in rushing average (3.2 per carry) and has zero touchdowns. But at least the Jets have a bunch of good, young players who should help in a big way, right? Well ... no. While Quinnen Williams has the makings of an excellent defensive tackle, that’s about it. The Jets have just 15 of their own draft picks on their own roster. And can anyone say with great conviction that Sam Darnold is a future franchise quarterback? He seems more ghosts than the girl from “Poltergeist.”

The lesson: If you’d ask the league’s 30 other GMs which situation they’d rather inherit — the Dolphins or the Jets — would any pick the Jets? It’s a stunning thought, but the Dolphins will have more and better draft picks and far more cap space next spring. Gase and Douglas have shown signs of a desire to blow it up. We’d suggest they do so, ASAP.

He said it: “Right now, we’re trying to get as many guys healthy as possible. We’re kind of in a weird spot where we’re starting get guys coming back from the last three weeks who have been hurt. We’re still trying to work through that. We’ve got guys playing some different spots. We’ve got some new mixup of lineups every week where we’re trying to figure out who’s doing what, who’s playing what. Every week, it seems like we’re learning more and more about our guys and I think our front office is doing everything they can to either get guys moved up from practice squad or having to move guys to IR. We have a lot of movement going on.” — Jets coach Adam Gase

This story was originally published October 31, 2019 at 11:59 AM.

Adam H. Beasley

Miami Herald

305-376-2387

Adam Beasley has covered the Dolphins for the Miami Herald since 2012, and has worked for the newspaper since 2006. He is a graduate of Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Communications and has written about sports professionally since 1996. Support my work with a digital subscription