Jets hire familiar face to lead search for new coach, GM

The Jets haven’t been to the playoffs since 2010. Now they’re hiring one of the key men who got them there to help end the longest postseason drought in North American professional sports.
No, the Jets haven’t decided to hire Rex Ryan as their coach (not yet, anyway). But the general manager who went to the playoffs with Ryan the last time the Jets were there, will play a key role in helping them fill their top coaching and front office position.
The Jets are retaining The 33rd Team, a media company and content creator providing analysis of the NFL, founded by former GM Mike Tannenbaum, who was also the Dolphins GM. He’ll lead the search alongside former Vikings GM Rick Spielman, who helped the Commanders in the coaching search that landed Dan Quinn last offseason, as they try to set a new tone for the Jets who fired general manager Joe Douglas last week and coach Robert Saleh on Oct. 8, on the way to their 14th straight season out of the playoffs after starting the season with Super Bowl expectations.
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It’s an interesting choice for several reasons: first, owner Woody Johnson has faced resounding criticism for giving too much weight to the opinions spread by non-football people on social media. So hiring a media company to fill the two most important jobs in the building doesn’t make it seem as if Johnson is concerned with that criticism .
Secondly, it’s not every day a guy who was fired by the owner is later hired by the same owner to lead a search that will shape the future of the franchise. But that’s exactly what Johnson is doing a little less than 12 years after he fired Tannenbaum as his GM, only to keep Ryan on as his coach for the next two seasons.
It’s also an important search for Johnson, who is running out of chances to reshape his Jets legacy, which has defined largely by failure since he bought the team in 2000. Johnson, 77, is likely to leave the team for the next four years to serve in the Trump administration; he was the U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom in the first Trump administration from 2017-21, leaving younger brother Cristopher Johnson as acting owner.
Woody Johnson wasted no time deciding to go with the The 33rd Team, getting the information out to the public less than a week after he fired Douglas and after the team’s bye week was spent with the Jets’ owner taking criticism after multiple reports of his extremely hands-on and disruptive ownership style emerged in the wake of Douglas’ departure.
And since The 33rd Team has never conducted a search like this before, what will it look like and how will they go about their business?
There are a bunch of questions that are unanswered: with Ryan publicly lobbying for the job, does this make it more likely or less likely that he gets it?
Will hiring The 33rd Team help the Jets convince coaching and GM candidates who might be skeptical of working for Johnson?
We’ll all find out together, apparently.
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Andy Vasquez may be reached at [email protected].