Maccagnan officially hired as GM

cool........

Can't figure out how to link on tablet

It's official, some four days after his second interview, and well after every football writer in America had been reporting it would eventually happen: Mike Maccagnan has been hired as the Jets' general manager. He will replace John Idzik, who was fired Dec. 29 along with head coach Rex Ryan. And so, after the 4-12 nightmare that was 2014, it's finally the start of a new day in Florham Park.

Maccagnan had been the director of college scouting for the Texans, so most of his work was behind the scenes, and with zero fanfare. (He's so under-the-radar he doesn't even have his own Wikipedia page, at least not yet. How hipster of him.) But by now you're probably wondering: Who in the world is this guy? We're here to try to fill in the blanks. Let's begin, shall we?

1. He's from Jersey. Maccagnan is a native of Hightstown, which is about 10 miles southeast of Princeton. Maccagnan graduated in 1985 from Peddie School, a private boarding and day school. At Peddie, Maccagnan played lacrosse and was a three-year starter for the football team, for which he played defensive end, nose guard, and linebacker. His father, Victor Sr., was the dean of students at Peddie at the time.

2. The college years. Maccagnan went on to play nose tackle at Division III Trinity (Conn.) College, where he also played lacrosse. JB Wells, the head football coach at Endicott (Mass.) College, was Maccagnan's teammate at Trinity for two years. Wells, who played center on the scout team as a freshman opposite Maccagnan, remembered Maccagan in a phone interview as a "monster nose tackle" who was "one of the toughest, meanest football players I ever played against. Every day, I knew I better bring my A-game because he was going to beat the hell out of me every day, if he could."

3. Scouting, scouting, scouting. Unlike Idzik, whose background was on the money side, Maccagnan's rise through the ranks was entirely through scouting and personnel, so look for him to bring in a cap person of some sort. Maccagnan's career in the NFL began in 1994, as a scout for Washington. He then became a pro scout a year later. In January 2000, as the Texans were starting from scratch as an expansion franchise that would first take the field in 2002, Maccagnan was hired as a pro scout for Houston. He's been there ever since.

4. The Charley Casserly connection. Casserly, one of the consultants assisting owner Woody Johnson with the Jets' search for a head coach and GM, hired Maccagnan in Washington back '94, when Casserly was Washington's GM. And when Casserly was tapped to be the Texans' GM before their launch, he brought Maccagnan down to Houston as one of the team's first hires. Those ties no doubt played a part in bringing Maccagnan to One Jets Drive.

5. World League and Canadian Football League ties. After earning a bachelor's degree in economics from Trinity, Maccagnan interned with Washington's scouting department before getting a paid gig as a league scout based out of Dallas with the defunct World League of American Football. A year later, he was the director of player personnel for the London Monarchs, who went on to win the World League title that year. He soon jumped to the Canadian Football League, where he would be the director of scouting and director of player personnel for the since-folded Ottawa Rough Riders and the director of scouting and player personnel for the Saskatchewan Roughriders. (Yes, those franchises had the same nickname, only spelled differently. Canada, man.)

6. Up the ranks with the Texans. Maccagnan was promoted three times in his 14 years with the Texans. In April 2000, just three months after his initial hire as a pro scout, Maccagnan was promoted to coordinator of college scouting. He remained in that post for 10 years, until he got bumped up to assistant director of college scouting in June 2010. And 13 months after that, Maccagnan had the "assistant" portion of that title removed from his name. He's been wearing the same pants as the Texans' director of college scouting ever since. And while, as his title suggested, he coordinated all of the Texans' college scouting in that role, he also had a say in evaluating other NFL teams and prospects when it came to free agency.

7. Quiet demeanor. Wells, the Endicott head coach who was Maccagnan's teammate at Trinity, said Maccagnan wasn't a rah-rah leader as a player. "I always found that he was just that guy that was quiet," Wells said. "He'd make a big play, and he'd get back to the sidelines. He wasn't flashy. He was a nose tackle—hand in the dirt and just beat the hell out of whoever's in front him, make a play, get off the field. Sit down, come back, do it again. How I remember him is just being very business-like and methodical." Told there's very little info about Maccagnan out there on the internet, Wells said, "That doesn't surprise me. He was that way as a player."

8. His college coach's take. Don Miller went 174-77-5 as Trinity's head coach from 1967-98. "I just remember him being a very intense, very competitive type of guy," Miller said of Maccagnan over the phone from his Connecticut home. "Hard-nosed. At Trinity, he was a bright young man. And he was a very good player. I don't have a recollection of all the players, but I do remember Mike."

9. Sound familiar? Trinity College has produced a number of other coaches and personnel people. One of them is Eric DeCosta, the Ravens' assistant general manager. DeCosta's name comes up every year when there's an NFL GM opening, and the Jets had asked to interview him for the job, but he declined, as he's done several times to other teams in recent years. DeCosta is a Colby (Me.) grad, but he earned a master's degree in English from Trinity, where he began his career as a graduate assistant.

10. Is Maccagnan any good? I knew you were going to ask this. As with any front-office executive who's not the man in charge, it's tough to tell exactly how much input Maccagnan has had with the Texans' recent drafts. He was the assistant director of college scouting when the Texans picked stud defensive end J.J. Watt 11th overall in 2011. Football Outsiders ranked the Texans' offensive line eighth in pass protection in 2014, and three-fifths of that line—Derek Newton, Ben Jones, Brandon Brooks—were drafted in the third round or later in the last four years. Their first-round picks after Maccagnan became director of college scouting: linebacker Whitney Mercilus (minus-1.4 grade from Pro Football Focus in 2014), who has been OK; wideout DeAndre Hopkins (10.3) who has been very good; and defensive end Jadeveon Clowney, who missed most of his rookie season with injuries. The Texans have whiffed on a few receivers in recent years, and they haven't gotten much production beyond Hopkins with their last two drafts, though, as Turn on the Jets notes, guard Xavier Sua Filo, tight end C.J. Fiedorowicz, and defensive tackle Louis Nix "were considered good value where they were selected" in 2014. Survey says: A mixed bag, as is true of most teams.

By Dom Cosentino

Best tweet I've read. Really makes me feel like MacCagnan really has a clear vision of what he wants to accomplish and how to do it.

I like it....now sign the H.C. And start naming the staff...?