Generally speaking, a General Manager operates as a team’s chief scout. In some situations, the General Manager operates more generally as a manager. Which maybe better fits with the name of the job.
“I want to find somebody that just looking forward, not talking about Mike [Maccagnan] here, I want a great strategic thinker,” Jets CEO and chairman Christopher Johnson told reporters on Wednesday. “It’s more than a talent-evaluation guy. I want a great manager, a communicator, who can collaborate well with the building. I’m convinced we’re going to find that person.”
Maccagnan may have been a good scout, but he apparently wasn’t a great manager. Brian Costello of the New York Post reports that the change had a lot to do with Maccagnan’s “indecisiveness,” and that Maccagnan took too long to make decisions and “was too wishy-washy at times.”
“Wishy-washy” wasn’t going to fly with a guy like Adam Gase, who even if he didn’t actively try to topple Maccagnan would have indirectly contributed to the move through whatever stream of “holy sh-t can we make a f--king decision here?"-type comments emerged in the heat of the moment as the Jets were trying to get things done.
So now Maccagnan is done, and Johnson will be looking for a big-picture strategic thinker/manager/communicator/collaborator -- and, presumably, someone else who will serve as the chief scout.
Basically, Johnson wants another Mike Tannenbaum-style G.M., with another Terry Bradyway-style once-was-a-G.M.-but-instead-focuses-on-finding-players personnel executive.
Unless, of course, Gase’s possibly unintended power play results in Johnson realizing that Gase is the right guy to lead the organization, and that a personnel executive will be hired to simply help him set the table. Only when Gase declares that that kind of talk “pisses me off” will we know that such a decision is imminent.
