Darrelle Revis has an opinion on Executive of the Year, and in his mind it's not even close.
"No doubt about it -- Executive of the Year for (Jets GM Mike Maccagnan)," Revis told the New York Daily News. "I think he would be the front-runner. The moves that he made to bring guys here and win now, especially after going 4-12 last year, it's pretty good. It's pretty great."
Revis is obviously the beneficiary of one of Maccagnan's moves, but this is an interesting situation to break down. Maccagnan should get the most credit for trading a fifth-round pick to the Bears for Brandon Marshall and a conditional seventh-round pick to the Texans for Ryan Fitzpatrick. The two are gargantuan pieces of a team that can walk into the playoffs with a win over the Bills on Sunday.
But the rest? Revis might actually have to credit a guy he doesn't like much: former GM John Idzik.
Idzik was hired with the directive to trade Revis and usher in some financial conservatism in New York. He got an additional first-round pick that ended up being Sheldon Richardson and he set the team up with more than $50 million in salary-cap space. Maccagnan had about $49 million to spend when he took the job.
We're not saying Idzik deserves to be in the chair still. There were some fairly egregious shortcomings in the personnel department that led to some massive draft whiffs, and Idzik did not have the two Super Bowl rings like the other general manager in town -- Giants GM Jerry Reese -- to survive it. But we're certain that Idzik doesn't deserve the label that he's been given as one of the worst executives of the last 10 years.
We don't know if Idzik would have spent lavishly in free agency this past year and we don't know if he would have picked Todd Bowles. We don't know if he would have dealt for Brandon Marshall, but we do know that all of it was possible because of the way he left the office before someone else sat in the chair.
Kudos to Maccagnan for putting all the pieces together, but let's not bury a decent GM who was fired for doing what he was told to do.
