There’s an old saying in sports, “We win as a team. We lose as a team.”
That means when a team isn’t doing well, nobody points fingers. From the top of the organization on down each person asks themselves what they can do better.
Let’s just say that in his quarter century of owning the New York Jets, this has never been a motto Woody Johnson has adhered to.
I have no idea why the people working for the Jets allow this guy to speak to the media unsupervised, but for some reason Woody was allowed to talk
to the press today. And he was ready to point the finger at the quarterback.
“If we could just complete a pass, it would look good.”
That’s the hard-hitting football analysis from the New York Jets’ owner.
Now whenever I call out Woody Johnson for his foolishness, somebody inevitably defends him. I’m sure someone out there is thinking, “What’s wrong with what he’s saying? He’s right.”
Well there’s nothing wrong with a fan saying these things. It’s quite a bit different when the owner is saying something like this.
First of all and perhaps most importantly, it’s just completely classless for an owner to trash a player, even one performing as poorly as Fields, like this. I’m not surprised by this behavior. Woody Johnson has consistently shown himself to be one of the lowest class individuals to ever be associated with professional sports. Even though it might be expected, it still should be called out. You don’t see other owners behaving this way, particularly owners from winning franchises. Fans are paying customers. You and I can say Fields stinks. The guy who owns the team is responsible as anybody when it is failing.
That brings me to my second point. Woody Johnson has done a staggering amount of damage to this franchise during his tenure, particularly the last fifteen years. He’s the last person who should be pointing fingers. He’s caused far more harm to the New York Jets than Justin Fields ever will.
We also should note what Woody Johnson said about Fields back in March.
Of course as you may remember, the Jets picked Zach Wilson over Fields that year. The implication of Woody’s statement is obvious. He wanted us to believe that he knew Fields was better than Wilson, but that dumb Joe Douglas made the Jets pick Wilson. If only they had listened to Woody’s genius.
I have a feeling Woody won’t be mentioning his alleged 2021 big board again any time soon. We’re probably a few weeks away from Woody claiming he’s never met Justin Fields before in his life.
Woody Johnson doesn’t act like a professional sports owner. When it comes to trying to escape blame for Jets failures, he is more like George Costanza during a classic scene from Seinfeld
Unfortunately for Jets fans, Woody has shown no indication he’s going to start following the exact opposite of his instincts.
