Mike Maccagnan never should have even had this perch to fall from.
That’s the word from Mike Lombardi, the former longtime NFL executive and briefly the Browns’ general manager, who’s now with The Athletic. Lombardi, who helped begin the rumblings that Maccagnan was not safe with the Jets late last month, reporting he was on the hot seat, says he never should have had that seat in the first place.
“Maccagnan’s a college scout who got promoted to become a GM. How? I don’t know,” Lombardi said on “The GM Shuffle” podcast Wednesday, before turning his attention to Maccagnan’s right-hand man. “… And so he brought [VP of player personnel Brian] Heimerdinger in, and Heimerdinger for whatever reason … he moved up the NFL as fast as any human being could possibly, with no experience, and he’s making all the decisions. And so it’s really a kind of a dysfunctional front office that’s been this way for years since they got there.
“But Todd Bowles … he never complained. He just took his medicine, smiled and went to work.”
Maccagnan made his name and rose as a scout, first with the Redskins in 1995. He then moved on to the Texans, where he eventually became the director of college scouting, and stayed 15 years until the Jets plucked him as GM in early 2015.
His tenure was marked by plenty of mistakes — his drafts got ugly after the first round — and maneuvering that allowed the Jets to draft Sam Darnold. The Jets let Maccagnan be the main voice in firing Bowles, hire Adam Gase, spend their fortune in free agency and then lead the draft before stunningly firing him Wednesday.
To Lombardi, the Jets did the right thing, regardless of the timing.
“I don’t think this is dysfunctional [for] the Jets, I’m going to be out alone on this one. The Jets had to get this right,” said Lombardi, who most recently worked under Bill Belichick with the Patriots from 2014 to 2016 and is still known to be close with the Patriots boss. “And the mistake the Jets made was not firing Maccagnan and Brian Heimerdinger when the season ended. I mean, these two guys were together for four years. They were the responsible builders of the Jets team.”
It’s a team that spent lavishly last offseason, including a five-year, $72.5 million deal given to cornerback Trumaine Johnson, who had a rough first season with the Jets. The premium free agents have not reflected well on Maccagnan.
“They would cut Trumaine Johnson if they could, but they can’t,” Lombardi said. “Like [Maccagnan has] had a disastrous offseason and he continues to do so. The remarkable thing about Maccagnan and Heimerdinger, and I’ve said this before, in their four years prior to this year, they’d never drafted an offensive lineman before the fourth round. … When you go to Team Building 101, the first thing they teach you in Team Building 101 is [to] draft offensive linemen.”
It will be on Gase, the interim GM, and whomever the Jets bring in to fix this mess. Gase last week said he was “pissed off” about the stories spreading about a rift between him and Maccagnan.
In Lombardi’s experience, Gase is “very good at denying stories that are completely 1,000 percent true.”