'Frustrated' Jets Owner Says Heads Could Roll — Or Not — On Black Monday
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- New York Jets owner Woody Johnson is in the business of winning games.
His team has only succeeded twice in 13 tries this season. And that means heads could roll on Black Monday.
"I'm a fan, I represent the fans. We're both frustrated by this," Johnson told the New York Daily News on Wednesday. "Ultimately, I am going to have to look for something that I believe is going to right the ship, whether it's the current way, the way we are doing it now with the people we have now or going down a different pathway. I'm looking at everything. I'm analyzing what's happened and why it's happened."
Johnson told the paper he's still unsure whether head coach Rex Ryan or general manager John Idzik will be employed by the close of business on Dec. 29, one day after the Jets' final game.
The owner has been said to be a big fan of Ryan, who led New York to consecutive AFC Championship games in his first two years as head coach. But this will be the fourth straight year missing the playoffs. It's hard to imagine him sticking around for a seventh season, especially with the Jets competing only for the top pick in the NFL draft.
Johnson said it won't come down to "fondness," and hinted that it could be time for a change.
"I've always thought he's a very good coach," Johnson said of Ryan, whose record including the postseason is 48-51. "He's an excellent coach, excellent teacher. The fans are going to want to see something different. They're not going to let us get along and I don't want to do exactly the same thing. So it's going to be either the way we coach or the way we approach it. It could be with the same people. It might be with different people. That's the case each and every year."
Idzik could be a goner, too. Fans have been calling for his firing in imaginative ways after a deliberate offseason approach left the team with plenty of cash to spare, despite questions in the secondary and a playmaker deficit on the offensive side.
Idzik is in just his second season with the franchise.
"It's safe to say you got to do things differently that you did to get you to this point," Johnson said. "The thing about football is that after every season, everybody is up for grabs. You take a look at everything. You're trying to get to the Super Bowl. It doesn't sound like I should even be saying that at this point. But that's what my goal is. That's what the fans want. They want to have a clear direction in terms of how they get to where they want to go. I have to give them confidence they are going to have a chance to get where they want to go."
Johnson acknowledged this season has been "agony" for the fans. At 2-11, he said it's been "extremely painful" and "the hardest year I've had in terms of losses."
"I would never have imagined," he told the newspaper. "I thought we were going to be actually very good. That's how much I know."
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