The New York Jets and Mike McCarthy had differences over building his staff, which was a big hang-up in the hiring process.
The New York Jets made the decision to hire Adam Gase as their next head coach to replace the fired Todd Bowles. There were several other options in play, including former Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy, and Baylor University head coach Matt Rhule.
Chris Johnson, running the team for brother Woody, was said to be enamored with McCarthy. So why was McCarthy not hired? According to Jason La Canfora of CBS Sports, the issue came down to disagreements about how the coaching staff would be built.
La Canfora notes that McCarthy wasn’t wild about the hierarchy that the team has where both he and general manager Mike Maccagnan would answer to ownership directly, but he was willing to move forward despite those issues.
However, when asked about the staff he would put together he began to feel the fit would not be right. La Canfora says that according to sources, “talks broke down essentially over the issue of staffing before it reached the stage where the job was outright offered to McCarthy.”
McCarthy is owed $9 million from the Packers this season, so there wasn’t a lot of motivation for him to land somewhere unless it was a perfect fit. Still, the fact that his concern was enough to prevent him from wanting to work with Sam Darnold could be somewhat concerning.
Of course, it also could be a blessing in disguise, as McCarthy was only able to reach one Super Bowl in 13 years despite coaching Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers. It’s certainly feasible that McCarthy’s numbers were over-inflated by working with two Hall-of-Fame-caliber quarterbacks.
La Canfora also notes that the names Rhule brought were1 also a concern for Johnson, as there wasn’t a lot of NFL experience on those staffs, and Johnson wanted a staff loaded up with NFL experience.
At the end of the day, Johnson wanted certain things from the staff, and Gase gave him the indication that he could deliver those traits. Time will tell if it was the correct move.
