TOJ: Release of Harris & Decker Could Hurt In Future

[Gas2No99]

New York Jets – Release of Harris & Decker Could Hurt In Future

Scott Mason on the New York Jets handling of David Harris and Eric Decker

June 8, 2017

 

What happened in Florham Park Tuesday may have ramifications far beyond 2017.

In case you missed it, the Jets released ILB David Harris and WR Eric Decker, two of their best players, but two veterans on a rebuilding team that is trending toward youth.

I get what the Jets are doing.  I just don’t get why they are doing it now.

 

With Decker, the move makes sense simply because the Jets have a crowded field of wide receivers with potential and they need to get reps.  Beyond Quincy Enunwa – an emerging star at the position who needs to be GIVEN THE DAMN BALL as much as possible this season – there is the speedy Robby Anderson, the big and athletic Charone Peake, as well as promising rookies ArDarius Stewart and Chad Hansen.

Decker is still a useful player and may have made the offense more potent, but having him on the roster would have obscured the long term goal of building these young receivers into a formidable group over the next few years.

That said, I do have to laugh at the announcement that the Jets will only cut Decker if they cannot trade him by the end of the week.  As Joe Caporoso quipped, that is one hell of a way to increase your leverage.  I can see the bidding war now, “I’ll give you this once used tennis ball……oh yeah, well I’ll give you this autographed picture of the wrestler Virgil!”

And despite the fact that he was still the best ILB on the team and a great leader, I do understand parting ways with David Harris, too, though less so than Decker.  Last year’s first round pick Darron Lee was erratic last season and surely could have benefited from Harris’s presence, not to mention that the only other ILB on the roster with anything resembling starting experience is Demario Davis, who was so impressive the first time he was in NY that the Jets may as well have driven him to the airport to catch a plane to Cleveland when his contract came up at the end of the 2015 season.

Still, this is a young, rebuilding team, and so I can see why they may have felt Harris’s presence wasn’t necessary.  Perhaps they believed the $6.5 million Harris was due this season would be better spent elsewhere.

That mentality makes sense.  Or at least it would have a few months ago when having cap space could have been an important tool in chasing potential free agents.  But what is the point of doing this now?

Some have speculated that it was Woody Johnson’s desire to pinch pennies.  While he has never seemed shy about spending money in the past, I guess this is possible.

Others have suggested the motive was the Jets desire to wait for season ticket holders to send in their money before doing this.  I suppose that is possible, too, though I’m not sure how many season tickets were riding on the presence of David Harris and Eric Decker on a team that everybody already expects to be one of the NFL’s worst in 2017.

My personal theory is that the Jets likely shopped both players and when nobody bit, the team decided to pull the trigger and release them both.  Just from a logical standpoint this make the most sense to me, though admittedly, I’m just guessing here.

Regardless of reasoning, what’s done is done, and unless Christian Hackenberg stuns all of us and becomes a quality starting QB fairly quickly, the 2017 Jets were all but assured to be miserable with or without Decker or Harris.

But what happens in 2017 isn’t all that important when it comes to these moves since everybody freely admits that the Jets are building a team for the long run, not the short run.

What is important, however, are the potential long lasting ramifications of the timing of these cuts, how they were handled, and the message they send to other players going forward.

We know that the Jets – as currently constituted – are a bad team.  Nobody is denying that.  Hell, they are so bad that Tony Jefferson and Donta Hightower both reportedly took significantly less money to play elsewhere.

If they ever want to be good again, though, they are going to need to develop young players who will want to stay with the team long term and create an environment that is attractive to future free agents.

And really, what does it say about this organization when they wait until June to release these guys when they would have had much better free agent leverage if they had been cut with others like Brand Marshall back in February?  What does it say about this organization that they let these guys practice Tuesday and risk getting hurt when their fates had already been decided?

Most importantly, though, what does it say about this organization when they needlessly blindside one of its most beloved and respected players so badly that ESPN’s Rich Cimini reports he had no idea what was coming mere minutes before the axe fell?

Tom Tolbert is a retired NBA player who played for the Los Angeles Clippers briefly in the early 1990’s.  Back then, the Clippers were widely seen as a gigantic joke and the worst run franchise in professional sports.  During this time, only players who were drafted by the Clippers or pretty much had no other option would be willing to play for them.

Why were they such a joke?  Well, they WERE perennially terrible.  But beyond that, they were also managed in a way befitting a fly-by-night scam business you might find running informercials in the middle of the night.

In fact, according to Tolbert, it was so bad that not having towels in the locker room was a fairly common occurrence, leaving the players to either bring their own from towels from home or – as Tolbert described doing once himself – rolling around on the carpet to dry off after a shower.

Think of it as the Rachel Phelps owned Cleveland Indians from the movie “Major League” but in real life.

The Jets may not be THAT much of a joke, but these are the kinds of classless and thoughtless moves that can make a free agent think twice about wanting to be a part of your team.

The Jets already had a poor reputation before Tuesday.  They just made it worse.

And when you have there is already such a negative stigma attached to their franchise, this is likely to cause the type of league-wide PR hit that they simply cannot afford.  The quality of the product is already bad, and the last thing they need right now is to bring the quality of the organization down to match.

Because ultimately, THAT is how you eventually become the LA Clippers.

–

[kdels62]

It's all a farce. If we look decent and pay money we'll sign whomever we want. 

[Bugg]

There may be some truth that players might consider that signing up with the Florham Park Circus some day in the future might be a consideration. But we also know plays chase $ above all else. And the Jets  will have a lot of it relative to other teams in 2018. Remains to be seen if they sign players who can actually contribute or guys simply looking for a paycheck. And frankly the McCown signing looks a lot like the latter right now. 

[Lupz27]

How are people who write these articles so uneducated on things like the nuances of the salary cap?

[JETSfaninNE]

24 minutes ago, kdels62 said:

It's all a farce. If we look decent and pay money we'll sign whomever we want. 

yeah a bunch of wasted words in the 2nd half of that article.  Why?  Why? Why?  Ummm because if they start winning nobody gives a damn what happened 3 yrs ago to a single player.

[peebag]

we're doing a youth movement....what's so hard with understanding that?  

[Joe Jets fan]

Who the heck wrote this?   Man, a lot of nobodies seem to get their stuff posted here. 

[Gas2No99]

11 minutes ago, Lupz27 said:

How are people who write these articles so uneducated on things like the nuances of the salary cap?

1 minute ago, Joe Jets fan said:

Who the heck wrote this?   Man, a lot of nobodies seem to get their stuff posted here. 

 

Well, anyone with a keyboard and an internet connection, the modern basic requirements to qualify oneself as an expert "journalist" and/or "reporter" on the topic of their choosing, and that has the time to type away on said topic as mental masturbation in order to validate their perspective; relevant factors that ruin their agenda BE DAMNED! 

Everything you read off the internet should be taken with a sack of salt and reconciled with as many other articles (on the same topic) as feasible to ultimately conclude what is the ACTUAL situation and facts which are being pontificated on. This, like more of the fluff out there at this moot point of the NFL off-season, is PURE Opinion but at least it's regarding the Jets. 

 

[jgb]

Most players chase money--their earning windows are small--unless they are close to retirement and take a discount to go out with a ring. The bigger concern is enticing a decent coach.