Mac hopes Johnson deal pays off
Forget the XFL — there is another pro football league coming in the offseason, and it will start next year.
The Alliance of American Football, founded by film producer Charlie Ebersol and former NFL executive Bill Polian, will debut Feb. 8, 2019 — one week after Super Bowl LIII — they announced at a press conference at the Park Hyatt in midtown on Tuesday.
Ebersol said he reached out to Polian about a year-and-a-half ago, and they have been “secretly” developing the league, which they said is not a competitor to the NFL but rather “complementary” to it.
The Alliance has a multi-year deal with CBS and will consist of eight teams and 10 games with playoffs and a championship game that will coincide with the weekend of the NFL Draft.
Teams, which will be owned and operated by the league, and coaches will be announced in April.
Ebersol, who directed the 30-for-30 documentary on the XFL — which his father, Dick, co-founded with Vince McMahon — said this will be different than other attempts at new football leagues because it is “real football with real football people” leading the way.
In addition to Polian, Ebersol recruited former players Jared Allen, Justin Tuck, Troy Polamalu and J.K. McKay to take on leadership roles within the organization.
“I wanted to build a team of people who were significantly more accomplished and smarter than I was and let them build what they thought the future of the sport was going to be,” Ebersol said.
Part of that goal is to make the game safer and the pace quicker, so The Alliance will have some slight differences from the NFL.
There will be no kickoffs, no onside kicks, no extra points, no TV timeouts, a 30-second play clock and two coaches replay challenges per team for only “consequential plays.”
Teams will start each possession at their own 25-yard line, but if the scoring team opts for an “onside kick” they will instead play a 4th-and-10 down from their own 35-yard line and if they convert, they continue the possession.
The league hopes to draw players who were either cut, undrafted or no longer under contract from NFL teams and give them a second chance to get back to that level.
Their contracts will be limited to the spring, so once the season ends players can attempt to try out for an NFL team.
“If they earned the opportunity to play in the NFL, then he’s gone,” Polian said. “We’d be proud of that. That’s why they’re here.”
For someone like Colin Kaepernick, though, it may be more difficult.
Alliance of American Football players who choose to be on the field during the national anthem will be required to stand.
Mike Maccagnan prefers the low-risk, highreward path to team-building for good reason. He hasn’t exactly nailed his first two big-money signings, after all.
The Jets general manager, however, hopes that the third time’s the charm with cornerback Trumaine Johnson, who inked a monster 5-year, $72.5 million deal that includes a whopping $34 million fully guaranteed. The deal is reminiscent of the one Maccagnan gave Darrelle Revis not long after he replaced John Idzik in 2015.
The Jets signed Revis to a 5-year, $70 million contract with an eye-popping $39 million Wyoming gunslinger Josh Allen is impressed by the Jets’ aggressive trade to try to land their franchise quarterback in the upcoming draft. Allen, part of the Big Three in this quarterback class (along with Sam Darnold and Josh Rosen), could be a member of Gang Green in five weeks depending on how the signal-caller dominoes fall on the first night of the draft. “If (the Jets) find a guy they fall in love with, I think that’s a team’s job to go get them if they feel that’s the future of their program,” Allen told Alex Marvez and Gil Brandt on SiriusXM NFL Radio this week. “They only traded three second-round picks for it.” Mike Maccagnan & Co. jumped from No. 6 to No. 3 by giving the Colts a trio of second-rounders (including two this season) after they lost the Kirk Cousins sweepstakes. “To keep their first-round pick next year was pretty big,” Allen said. “Sometimes, it takes another first-round pick (to move up). Luckily for them, they didn’t have to do that. I think they’ve still got some good quality there.” The 6-5, 233-pound Allen will show off his canon arm at Wyoming Pro Day on Friday. Although he certainly fits the bill of a Maccagnan prototype quarterback, there are fair concerns about his accuracy. Allen had a 56 percent completion rate in each of his two seasons as the starter in college. “I think that any time I would miss in college, it was largely due to my feet,” Allen said. “In getting with (quarterback instructor) Jordan (Palmer), I’ve been trying to correct my feet through every throw and make sure that I was sequencing consistently. Once my feet started to clean up, that’s when you started seeing the ball placed in the right positions.” The Jets will invest plenty of time studying Allen over the next month. fully guaranteed. The perennial Pro Bowler returned the favor by flopping before he was cut after two seasons. (Full disclosure: Woody Johnson was the driving force in the Revis reunion, but Maccagnan deserves criticism for the outrageous money since no other team was offering anywhere near that much.)
Maccagnan gave Muhammad Wilkerson a five-year, $86 million deal in July 2016 only to be disappointed again with his sizeable investment. Wilkerson pocketed $37 million in two aggravating/massively underachieving seasons before he was cut three weeks ago.
Needless to say, the Jets hope that they have much better luck with Johnson, who is expected to be the team’s top cornerback now. The structure of the contract essentially guarantees that he’s going nowhere for at least two years. Beyond that, nothing is guaranteed yet. The Jets, however, would incur a $12 million dead money charge against the 2020 cap if they cut Johnson after the 2019 season. So, there’s a solid chance that the Jets will pay Johnson $45 million over the next three seasons barring horrific play.
DONAHUE REHAB: Linebacker Dylan Donahue recently checked himself into a treatment facility after being arrested for driving under the influence for the second time in less than a year. The 25-year-old Donahue was arrested and charged with drunken driving early on Feb. 26 after police said he drove the wrong way in the Lincoln Tunnel and collided with a jitney bus, injuring four people. — AP