Jets' Darren Mougey Absolutely Blasted in Latest Ranking

As we look around the NFL this offseason, and even over the past year or so now, some general managers have stood out more than others. I really like what New York Jets general manager Darren Mougey has done, as the second-year decision-maker has made some tough moves, though many of them were necessary. 

Instead of trying to build around a roster that obviously wasn't going as planned, the Jets and Mougey decided to take a different route and move on from some of those guys. Players like Sauce Gardner were traded, and that definitely left some questions.

However, getting multiple first-round picks back for him and Quinnen Williams seemed like the smart move at the time. 

Only time will tell if he made the right decisions, but the process was the right one there. While I like the moves and think Mougey did the right thing, it doesn't sound like others really believe that, including a writer for NBC, who ranked him as the worst general manager in the NFL because of some of these decisions.

“Darren Mougey’s one and a half years in charge is not what’s ailing the Jets. Give it time. Although Mougey cannot be blamed for the systemic rot in owner Woody Johnson’s organization, he had no positive additions take root in 2025, save for perhaps No. 7 overall right tackle Armand Membou. Mougey also can’t take the blame for hiring Aaron Glenn since the head coach arrived three days before him. But they are in this together now, and their 2026 “solutions” of signing Geno Smith and hiring offensive coordinator Frank Reich have confirmed this is the most desperate situation in the league.

“That’s especially true since the two genuine building blocks Mougey did have in CB Sauce Gardner and DL Quinnen Williams have been traded away. Whether it was because Johnson didn’t want to pay up or Mougey wanted the draft capital isn’t terribly relevant. It was a move made thinking 3-4 years into the future, and that’s simply not the time horizon Johnson’s franchise operates on. Mougey needs immediate 2026 results. Even with his admittedly good-looking spring draft class, that doesn’t seem possible with the 53-man roster Mougey and his predecessors have assembled,” Patrick Daugherty of NBC wrote.

There are a few things that I think are wrong with this ranking, though I can understand the process behind it. 

If some of these moves don't work out for the Jets, there's obviously a lot of reason to believe that Mougey is going to take a ton of heat. On the flip side, it seems a bit too early to discredit these moves when we don't know how some of the players from these trades and moves are going to look in New York.