Tom Rock: Jets' deal for Geno Smith is practical decision by GM Darren Mougey
Quarterback Geno Smith of the Jets celebrates against the Baltimore Ravens at MetLife Stadium on Oct. 23, 2016. Credit: Getty Images/Al Bello
The most important task for Darren Mougey this offseason is to do absolutely nothing that in any way hampers or precludes the Jets from acquiring, at some point in the next 14 months, a quarterback with whom they can win.
Trading for Geno Smith tracks with that aim.
He’s cheap, both in terms of the salary the Jets will have to pay and the pittance that they gave the Raiders to acquire him. He should be modestly better than what the Jets had at their disposal last season and continue to have dangling on their roster in Justin Fields. He’ll be able to give the team someone who can at the very least pass the ball to Garrett Wilson and check it down to Breece Hall and make the right, timely decisions in the pocket. And a year from now he won’t be missed.
He is the perfect imperfect quarterback for the Jets at this exact moment.
And if by chance he happens to do for the Jets what he did for the Raiders — play to the level that gifts his team the first overall pick in the ensuing draft — well, the Jets should pay him a bonus.
None of this is to say that the Jets are actively tanking. They don’t have to be the worst team in the league in 2026. But it’s no secret that they have been gearing up for the 2027 draft ever since the day this past fall when they decided to trade Sauce Gardner and Quinnen Williams.
Since then Mougey, the Jets’ general manager, has done a fantastic job of accumulating and not spending the capital he has acquired. The Jets have a trove of picks with which to work next year’s quarterback-rich draft class if they like, and they will have the salary cap space and freedom to make a move for a young-ish veteran at the position if one happens to become available between now and then too. We’re still not taking our eye off Joe Burrow and the Bengals in that regard.
Mougey has also managed to help improve the 2026 team, especially on defense, during this roster-building season. The swap with the Titans for T’Vondre Sweat in exchange for Jermaine Johnson, the trade of a late-round pick and the new contract that led Minkah Fitzpatrick to the Jets from the Dolphins, and the other additions that the Jets have cobbled together in the past few days, all indicate a desire for the team to be better and deeper on head coach Aaron Glenn’s side of the ball in particular. Mougey added a number of players who have experience with Glenn and who will allow the coach’s ways to permeate the locker room much deeper than they did last year when most of the squad was made up of leftovers from the previous regime.
Mougey has been on the job for a little over a year and the Jets are in a better place since he took over. He seems adept at his work and is doing it without much flash or desire for the spotlights. He seems happy to cede the public voice of the organization to Glenn while he stays in the back setting up the pins, although there are plenty of times Glenn comes awfully close to making that an unwise strategy. It’s an odd dynamic looking back that Mougey came across as the afterthought when the Jets hired that pair. Glenn rolled into the building thundering away about culture and winning and plans and physicality while Mougey slid through the side door and just got to work.
This current set of moves may even be enough to save Glenn’s job. Even if they don’t translate directly to wins, if the Jets just look less lost than they did last season it will be an improvement. But it isn’t Glenn whose life they are really designed to make easier and more successful. It’s that next quarterback’s, the great unnamed specter of Football Yet To Come who still looms out there for the organization.
All of this, the trading and the signing and the reunion with Smith and whoever else the Jets decide to add or subtract in the coming weeks and months, is just throat-clearing. The moves are the practice reps for the real thing, preparation for the move that will ultimately define Mougey’s tenure with the team.
In the meantime, the Jets landed a quarterback on Tuesday in a move that will become official on Wednesday. He’ll likely be their starter heading into the coming season.
But they, of all teams in the league, know what Geno Smith is and what he can be.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
