NY Jets must look to Thomas Dimitroff as next GM as underwhelming candidate emerges

The NY Jets have started the process of finding their next general manager after the firing of Joe Douglas. As of Thursday, amid reports that detail just how deep the dysfunction in Florham Park is, the Jets have not interviewed four different candidates for the immeasurably difficult job of Jets GM.

The first round of three consists of former Atlanta Falcons mastermind Thomas Dimitroff, ex-Tennessee Titans GM Jon Robinson, and ESPN NFL analyst Louis Riddick. The Jets added one more name to the list on Thursday, though it came from way out of left field.

The Jets recently conducted an interview with Jim Nagy, who had made his name as the director of the Senior Bowl since the 2019 season. While Nagy knows his football, the fact he is apparently on equal footing with some of the other names is concerning.

The Jets have the ability to hire someone who hots a college All-Star showcase and someone who narrowly won a Super Bowl and led the Falcons to 113 wins in 12 seasons. The choice should be obvious to Woody, Brick, or whoever ends up calling the shots.

NY Jets must hire Thomas Dimitroff as GM over Jim Nagy

Nagy sure knows how to pick a prospect to get invited to his showcase, and being able to scout college talent may be the most important part of being a general manager. However, hiring someone who has not been connected to an NFL team since 2018 (and in a scout role, at that) is a titanic risk the Jets can't afford to take.

Contrast that with Dimitroff's resume. In 12 years in Atlanta, which began after the horrid Bobby Petrino mistake, Dimitroff had eight .500 or better seasons and made the postseason six times. He hired the two best Falcons coaches ever in Mike Smith and Dan Quinn, drafted Matt Ryan and Julio Jones, and needed unprecedented levels of bad luck not to win a Super Bowl.

Nagy might know football, but going straight to the top of any team, let alone one that needs a complete cultural shift from top to bottom, is too difficult of an undertaking for him. Both Nagy's reputation and the Jets' overall record will suffer as a result of this move.

While Dimitroff is not a guaranteed success, it would make more sense for the Jets to bet on a guy who has more than a decade of experience as the primary decision-maker and a history of building winning teams. Don't hire someone who played a nice acoustic set at a bar to headline Lollapalooza.

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