Behind the scenes of the Jets’ Gase-Maccagnan rift
Where’s the camera?
Adam Gase’s frustration was palpable. He had spent months grumbling about decisions, non-decisions and just about everything else on One Jets Drive. People around him brushed it off as “Adam being Adam,” but there was an underlying uneasiness that wasn’t going to disappear until one massive change was made.
The draft was the final straw for CEO Christopher Johnson, who had reservations about retaining Mike Maccagnan after the season before he finally fired the general manager and lieutenant Brian Heimerdinger this week.
Along the way, Gase seized an opportunity to gain control with a savvy play in the strangest sort of passive-aggressive power struggle that included petulance, back-door bad-mouthing and obliviousness.
Johnson took the heat in the wake of the firings, looking like a lost, indecisive soul.
“He sees the good in everybody,” a current Jets employee said of Johnson in the wake of the acting owner’s unorthodox moves. “He just doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
The signs were all there in the run-up to - and during - the draft. Gase was understandably angry at the whole damn process. (More on that later.)
So Gase strategically distanced himself by first locating the war room camera. He had a seat next to Johnson that would have been in the view of the camera.
“He literally took his seat and moved it (out of camera view),” said a current team employee that was in the war room. “That was extreme.”
Gase wanted to wash his hands of the draft before it even began, according to sources. Eyewitnesses told the Daily News that he was oddly detached for all three days. This was a Maccagnan Production through and through. Gase stayed out of the way, rarely giving input on trade possibilities or prospects when the Jets were on the clock. There was no point that Gase ever fought for or objected to any of Maccagnan’s picks.
The sentiment among people in the room: This was awkward.
Johnson, meanwhile, had viewed his two years in charge through an idyllic prism. He had good intentions and a glass-half-full mindset. Truth be told, he wanted Maccagnan to succeed even if he had serious concerns about his general manager’s communication deficiencies at the end of the season.
Some of the brain trust, including owner Woody Johnson, would have signed off on firing Maccagnan in January if that’s what Christopher wanted.
But Christopher Johnson was concerned about his ability to lead both a general manager and coaching search alone. The support staff in the building, frankly, wasn’t qualified. Johnson liked Maccagnan on a personal level and felt comfortable that the GM and his top lieutenant would be the best people in-house to lead a coaching search.
Johnson kept Maccagnan and Heimerdinger, and kept his fingers crossed that it would all work in the end with a new head coach.
People in the organization truly believe that Johnson wants the Jets to succeed, but there’s a strong sentiment among those that I’ve spoken to in the past 48 hours that he simply doesn’t have the experience, football savvy and support structure right now to make sound choices.
Sources agree with moving on from Maccagnan, but some vehemently objected with the timing of the decision.
“It didn’t make sense,” one team source said.
People on One Jets Drive believe that Johnson means well, but they have little confidence that they can actually trust his decision-making to reverse the perception of the Jets as a laughingstock.
Jets employees aren’t alone. Seventy-two percent of the more than 10,000 people who participated in an online Daily News Poll this week do not trust that Johnson knows what he’s doing.
The run-up to the draft should have been an eye opener for him. Gase’s frustration was understandable.
The dynamic between Maccagnan and Gase during the team’s pre-draft meetings was odd. Gase badly wanted to share his opinions on what types of players he was looking for in his system during these organizational discussions, but remained quiet, according to sources. Maccagnan didn’t ask the coach to share his evaluations during those sessions.
The reason? The general manager didn’t want Gase to adversely influence his scouts’ evaluations, according to sources.
It was a curious approach that understandably angered Gase, who simply wanted to provide more information and depth on player prototypes that made sense for his schemes so that he would be on the same page with the guys who had spent the past year or so studying college players.
“It pissed Adam off,” a team source said. “Mike didn’t want him to speak up too much. It’s a weird philosophy.”
Gase shared his thoughts on players to Maccagnan in smaller meetings, but the notion that scouts, by and large, were kept in the dark about how the head coach felt about draft prospects should have ticked him off.
Maccagnan, who had the same philosophy with Todd Bowles, was bent on not having the scouts swayed by the head coach. It was a counterproductive approach that only served to alienate Gase, who expressed his frustrations in myriad ways to many people in league circles.
Gase, already unhappy with some of Maccagnan and Johnson’s decisions in free agency (the Le’Veon Bell acquisition was driven by ownership), had strategically detached himself from the draft by the time the Jets were on the clock with the third pick.
Johnson was witness to the odd draft proceedings, but tried to keep an optimistic outlook on this arrangement. In fact, he privately told people on One Jets Drive that rumors of Maccagnan’s impending ouster were simply untrue. The GM was oblivious to his firing. until he was fired.
Gase had a small window to seize control. If the Jets were in the playoff conversation in 2019, he’d be tied to a general manager that he quickly learned was not a good fit for him. If the Jets stunk up the joint this season, he’d lose the juice that he has with the owner right now.
Gase’s annoyance and irritation over certain issues were warranted. He felt his voice carried little weight on certain important matters. So, he did what he felt he had to do.
He strategically ingratiated himself with Johnson, who was looking for a strong communicator on the football side of the organization.
Was it right? Does it matter if it wasn’t? The bottom-line reality: Gase won the offseason.
He will effectively hand pick the next general manager (with Johnson’s approval). How will this impact the rest of the football operations on One Jets Drive? Will there be much more upheaval?
“I don’t think he wants to screw a lot of people over,” one Jets employee said of Gase. “Because he feels like he already kind of did that.”