Woody, Wolf & Casserly

[JetNation]

Black Monday left little doubt about the future of Rex Ryan and John Idzik. The duo was fired early this morning by owner Woody Johnson. today at 11am and gave his thoughts.

We’re in a win business and we’re not winning, so I thought this was something I had to do, it’s a necessary step.

What happens next seems to be in the hands of two long-time NFL consultants. Charley Casserly and Ron Wolf are tasked with recommending the Jets next general manager. Woody spoke about how the three of them will make a decision on the Jets future.

Woody Johnson: Ron Wolf and Charley Casserly will help me in this process… The 3 of us are leading this search.

— Eric Allen (@eallenjets) December 29, 2014

It is assumed that the next general manager will name the new head coach. At that time a decision about any assistants that are under contract can be made. Before we get that far, let’s take a deeper look at Casserly and Wolf.

Charley Casserly

(born 1948) is an American football sportscaster and former executive. Casserly was the general manager of the National Football League’s Washington Redskins from 1989 to 1999. He served as Senior Vice President & General Manager, Football Operations, for the Houston Texans from 2000 to 2006. He currently works for NFL Network.

In his 23-year career with the Washington Redskins, the team went to four Super Bowls, winning three. Casserly was an assistant to Bobby Beathard for two of the Super Bowl winning seasons. In 2003, NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue appointed him to the NFL’s Competition Committee for the second time (2003–06; 1996–1999).

After leaving the Redskins, Casserly took on the General Manager role for the expansion Houston Texans. With the franchise’s first four selections in the 2002 NFL Draft, Casserly drafted David Carr, Jabar Gaffney,Chester Pitts, and Fred Weary.

During Casserly’s remaining drafts for the Texans, (2003 through 2006), the Texans drafted five eventual Pro-Bowlers: Andre Johnson (WR, 2003), Jerome Mathis (KR, 2005), DeMeco Ryans (LB, 2006), Mario Williams (DE, 2006) and Owen Daniels (TE 2006). Ryans was also named the NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year in 2006. Mario Williams, who many criticized for being the #1 overall pick in 2006 (behind college standouts Reggie Bush and Vince Young), made the Pro Bowl in the 2008 season.

Ron Wolf

(born 1938) is the former American football general manager (GM) of the National Football League’s Green Bay Packers. He also played a significant role in personnel operations with the Oakland and Los Angeles Raiders from 1963 to 1975 and again from 1978 to 1990. He joined Green Bay’s front office in November 1991 from a personnel director’s job with the New York Jets.

On December 31, 2012, San Diego Chargers President Dean Spanos retained Wolf as a consultant to advise the Chargers throughout the general manager and head coach hiring process.

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[C Mart]

As NY Jets zero in on new coach and general manager, consultants Charley Casserly and Ron Wolf are the two men who have Woody Johnson's ear

BY HANK GOLA 

 

Chiefs general manager John Dorsey’s team was about to take on the Seahawks this year when he was asked about his common connection with Seattle GM John Schneider. Ron Wolf was their mentor in the Packers’ scouting department.

 

“I remember sitting there after a draft meeting,” Dorsey told the Seattle Times. “You had a big old box of VHS and Beta tapes. One Friday night, Wolf said, ‘Boys, I want that box done by tomorrow.’ So Schneider and I stayed there until about 3 in the morning, we did every tape in that box, and we found one guy.”

 

Travis Jervey, that one guy, was the Packers’ fifth-round pick in 1995, a running back out of The Citadel. He may not be going to Canton but he did make one Pro Bowl as a special teamer during a nine-year career in the NFL, discovered by the light of midnight oil fueled by a little elbow grease.

 

If that has been what’s missing from the Jets lately, Wolf might be the right guy to help fix it. Along with ex-Washington and Texans GM Charley Casserly, the Hall of Fame nominee is flying around in the Jets’ version of Air Force One, consulting Woody Johnson as he decides on the team’s next GM and head coach.

 

In the latest NFL trend, owners are increasingly more businessmen than football people. Both Wolf and Casserly serve on the NFL’s eight-man Career Development Advisory Panel, which has assembled a LinkedIn style compendium of coaching and administrative candidates. While some might see it as an over-reach by Big Brother, for some owners it is more like going to the oracle, even if the advisers the owners are turning to have been out of football for a while.

 

Wolf has played headhunter before. He advised Raiders owner Mark Davis on the hiring of GM Reggie McKenzie, another of his protégés from the Packers’ scouting department. Most recently, he consulted the Spanos family on the Chargers’ selection of Tom Telesco as GM and Mike McCoy as head coach before the 2013 season.

 

Casserly is new to the consulting game, though not short on opinions: his most recent gig since he was fired by the Texans in 2006 is as a commentator for NFL Network. Casserly questioned the way the Jets were running things from the start this year, pointing out that “it’s hard to know from the outside-in who’s making the final decision on things.”

 

Casserly noted that the organization had not provided Rex Ryan with what he needed to make his system work, specifically cornerbacks, adding, “I thought Rex should have been the coach of the year at 8-8 last year.”

 

So what can Casserly and Wolf bring to the Jets’ table?

 

For one, they share a winning background and began their careers from the ground up.

 

Wolf, who retired from the NFL in 2001, had 41 years of service that began with him scouting for Al Davis’ Raiders at the age of 25 in 1963 and was central to the discovery of Gene Upshaw and Art Shell. He moved to head of football operations for the expansion Bucs in 1975 and, while he had already returned to the Raiders in ’78, his drafts had Tampa Bay in the NFC Championship Game in ’79.Before Casserly, a River Edge, N.J. product, became part of the personnel department that got Washington to four Super Bowls in the ’80s and ’90s, he fetched coffee for George Allen.

 

He spent two years in the Jets front office before he turned around the fortunes of the then-downtrodden Packers and proved that a small-market team could still win in the era of free agency.

 

“The thing about him was he was so decisive,” McKenzie recalled after Wolf was nominated for the Hall of Fame in October. “Right, wrong or indifferent, he was strong and stood by his moves and his plan.”

 

Plan is a key word because the Jets don’t seem to have had one, at least not one that worked. And that was Casserly’s strength, according to Bobby Beathard, under whom Casserly worked in Washington.

 

“I was a little different than Charley. I flew by the seat of my pants and went by instinct,” Beathard says. “Charley is highly organized, a lot of attention to detail. Very methodical, no stone unturned. He’s what they’re looking for, perfect for this.”

 

When Casserly landed the GM job when Houston came into the league, he blew away owner Bob McNair with a complete plan for running an expansion franchise, from personnel to public relations.

 

In that respect, Casserly, who is said to be high on ex-Bills coach Doug Marrone — who interviewed with the Jets on Saturday — is likely to be a supporter of Texans director of scouting Mike Maccagnan, who broke in under Casserly. Maccagnan is scheduled for an interview.

 

“Same attention to detail, same work habits,” says a Houston source. “He’s just more behind the scenes than Charley, more focused on the scouting end.”

 

“I have great respect for the process and structure that’s been in place since Ron Wolf came here in 1991,” Packers coach Mike McCarthy said recently. “Just the way our people go about it, there’s just a lot of confidence from a personnel department to the coaching department, and vice versa. It’s definitely a fun part of the job.”Overarching everything in Casserly and Wolf’s shared philosophy is that the GM and coach have to be on the same page. The Packers are the perfect model with a clear division of duties. Someone needs to have the final say.

 

For the most part, Casserly and Wolf have been working the phones and using their connections. After all, in Wolf’s case, there aren’t many people left whom he worked with, and those who are — Dorsey, Schneider, McKenzie and Packers GM Ted Thompson, for instance — have jobs they aren’t leaving.

 

The real value may be in the actual interview process. At least that is what the Chargers found out before they settled on McCoy, which was a good decision.

 

“When you’re interviewing candidates who have never been a head coach, I think one of the No. 1 questions is, ‘Is this guy ready to be a head coach?’” John Spanos, the team’s director of college scouting, said in an interview with the San Diego Union Tribune when McCoy was hired. “And Ron, when it was all said and done, agreed with all of us. ‘This guy is ready. There’s no doubt. This guy is ready.’

 

“I remember him saying that, and it just kind of reaffirmed all of our thoughts.”

 

“He was great,” Chargers president Dean Spanos added. “He did exactly what I was hoping he would do. He didn’t ask a whole lot of questions, but the questions he asked were very important — and it told a lot.”

 

Whatever it is they’re telling the Jets, it is probably centered on football. And that would be a change.

 

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/jets/jets-consultants-casserly-wolf-long-experience-article-1.2064641

[Larz]

I really hope wolf has more influence that casserly in the end