The Jets Tried to Force Their OLine Coach to Quit So They Wouldn't Have to Pay Him
Manish Mehta -The Jets’ prolonged contract dispute with a former coach has prompted people across the NFL to question how the organization conducts business.
The Daily News has learned that the team resorted to unusual tactics during a year-long disagreement with former offensive line coach/run game coordinator Rick Dennison. An arbitration hearing is expected to take place at the Commissioner’s office later this month if a settlement isn’t reached, according to sources.
The Jets attempted to re-assign Dennison to a scouting position after he was told that Adam Gase wouldn’t retain him on his staff in order to force him to quit and forfeit about $1 million, according to sources.
Moreover, Gase told people that he had discussed a possible reassignment to the scouting department with Dennison when he actually never did, sources said.
The News spoke to 11 people in and around the league, including general managers, high-level front office executives and agents, about the particulars of this standoff. The prevailing sentiment: This was uncommon behavior for an NFL team.
You never know with 100% certainty what's going on inside the Jets. Between the leaks to Manish Mehta that make Adam Gase look like a buffoon to the burner account that might be from Gase himself or from Mehta
... or from the Jets PR department:
… trying to unravel all the layers of mystery, intrigue, agendas and vendettas will twist your brain into a balloon animal. So for the purposes of this blog, I'm going to assume everything they're being accused of is true. And that a $2.75 billion franchise in the biggest media market on the continent, with a stadium built by taxpayers and a multi-billionaire owner who inherited a baby powder fortune tried to Bernie Madoff an employee out of a lousy million bucks.
Only the Jets.
It's one thing if Gase didn't like Rick Dennison's job performance. In the assistant coaching racket, you serve at the discretion of the head guy, no matter how unhinged he is. So fine. Send whatever the coaching equivalent of The Turk to bring him down to your office like you do to half your roster at the end of every August, tell him to his face it's not working out, man to man. You don't try to make him miserable just to get him to quit in order to save a million Woody Johnson Bucks.
This is supposed to be a National Football League franchise. Gase is running it like the supervisor at the Post Office who thought my uncle Phil was a wiseass and handed him a broom and told him to sweep up the place, just to humiliate him into quitting. So Uncle Phil snapped the handle in two over his knee and said "I can't; the broom's broken," and got fired. (Thanks to then U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy for getting him reinstated and keeping a roof over my cousins' heads.) The point being, the Jets are a multi-billion dollar franchise being run like a late 1950s Boston Post Office.
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Adam Gase would rather cheat one of his assistant's out of his contractually-agreed upon salary and do further damage to his own horrific reputation, just to save his owner 1/79th of Carrabis's net worth. Way to go. Good luck hiring any assistant who has any option other than to come work with you. I say again, only the Jets. If they didn't exist, I'd have to invent them.
P.S. To Rick Dennison, if you're looking for revenge, I know a team that suddenly has an opening at offensive line coach. And their owner pays.