Philly Front Office

I’m talking about the real shit bombs. Each of these five owners has their own disgraceful claim at the top spot. Unfortunately, nobody wins here because they are all losers. These teams have all been run into the ground due to their own special brand of complete incompetence. You really have to feel for anyone still cheering for these teams…except the Giants.

Worst NFL Owners Part 1

5. David Tepper, Carolina Panthers: All of the owners on this lowly list have one thing in common (besides being terrible), they have all been owners for at least 13 seasons. It usually takes years of losing to establish yourself at the bottom. Not David Tepper, a true losing savant. In only 7 years, the hedge fund manager can boast the team with the worst record (.310) and an astonishing 7 different coaches. It goes without saying that Carolina hasn’t come close to the playoffs despite being 11-5 the year before Tepper took over. Then there are the off-field incidents including allegedly throwing a drink at a fan and browbeating a restaurant manager for questioning him with a funny sign. On the field, the team mismanaged what little talent it had by waiting too long to make trades. Most notably they turned two first rounders for Brian Burns into a second round pick. Then there is the Bryce Young debacle. Not only did they select Young over CJ Stroud, but to get there they traded away the next year’s top pick which ended up #1 overall (as well as DJ Moore (194 catches in 2 years), their own first (Jalen Carter), a second, and the #39 pick this year). It is not an exaggeration to say he has done nothing right since buying the team.

For a man who once proclaimed himself “a regular upper-middle-class guy who happens to be a billionaire,” Tepper is completely lost with no ability to evaluate either leadership or talent. His status as the second richest single owner in the league has left him castrated with no ability to buy his way out of his problems in the salary capped NFL.

4. Mark Davis, Las Vegas Raiders: The NFL’s reigning Adonis can’t seem to ever get out of his Dad’s shadow. Oh Chucky. I know it’s shallow, but his haircut is not doing him any favors. Neither is palling around with an Instagram model with whom he is clearly not dating. Let’s keep this professional! He is a cool 46 games under .500 with 2 playoff appearances and no wins in his 14 seasons after taking over for his dad. Over the last ten years he has hired 5 GMs and, even more impressively, soon to be 6 head coaches despite signing Jon Gruden to a 10 year, $100m contract in 2018 (Gruden was eventually terminated for spewing some hateful nonsense). Under Gruden and handpicked analyst turned GM Mike Mayock, the Raiders traded a 3 and a 5 for malcontent Antonio Brown who didn’t make it out of training camp. This is even funnier considering the previous year the Raiders traded a different 3rd rounder to the Stealers for Martavious Bryant who ALSO didn’t make it out of training camp.

For years the team has been beyond hopeless in the draft as well. Though not as many have been arrested as you would think, the ones that were are particularly bad. Over their last 10 drafts, the first 2 rounds have produced 2 stars (Brock Bowers and Josh Jacobs) one other current starter (Kolton Miller) and that’s it:

• 2023 – Tyree Wilson: #7, 8 sacks in 2 years (over Jalen Carter)
• 2022 – No 1st or 2nd rounders
• 2021 – Alex Leatherwood: #17, so bad he was waived after 1 season
• 2020 – Henry Ruggs III: #12, serving 3-10 years Nevada State Prison
• 2020 – Damon Arnette: #19, released after brandishing guns in a video after 1.5 seasons. Many arrests later he is out of the league but goes by his rapper name NWG Suave.
• 2019 – Clelin Ferrell and Jonathan Abram: #4 and #27. Ferrell had 9 sacks in 4 years before being released, Abram did even less. (Josh Jacobs is good but they refused to extend him and is now in GB)

Despite this, they are never bad enough to get the #1 pick which leaves them with one of the worst starting QB situations in the league (nobody and no chance). They are NFL purgatory not unlike the post-Iverson Sixers. Finally, just in case you wanted to feel sorry for this bowl-cut a-hole, he moved the team from Oakland to Las Vegas in some misguided attempt to be like his dad.

UPDATE: Raiders fired their GM Tom Telesco as I was typing this. The Raiders pad their lead with 6 GMs in 10 years. Congrats Mark!

3. Woody Johnson, New York Jets: Without proof I will assume that Woody Johnson is related more to the second Johnson of his Johnson & Johnson fortune. Afterall, he has the second most losses in the league over the last ten years, he owns the second worst team in NY (which is also the second most popular), and is second to John Mara again on this very list. Can he win anything? Well, the Jets are tied for the fewest playoff appearances AND fewest winning seasons over the last ten years with ZERO. In fact, the Jets haven’t made the playoffs in 14 years since the great butt fumbling Mark Sanchez was still around. Since then, they drafted Christian Hackenberg in the second round, Sam Darnold #3 overall (ahead of Josh Allen), and Zach Wilson #2 overall (ahead of the Chase, Sewell, Surtain, Smith, Parsons, Slater run) all before bowing to the inevitable and pulling the trigger on 39-year-old Aaron Rodgers which has worked out GREAT! Oh yeah, they also brought in Tim Tebow in 2012. Breaking News: The Jets still need a QB.

That Darnold pick, btw, came after trading up from #6 (perennial all-pro Quenton Nelson) along with #37, 49, and #34 the next year. Just this year they traded for disgruntled Eagle Haason Reddick without offering him the contract extension that made him disgruntled in the first place (he put up 1 sack for the $15m he made this season in 2 starts) then traded for Devante Adams to make their washed QB happy. Speaking of which, they are either going to have to pay that washed QB a $49m to be on the team next year or $49m over 2 years to NOT be on the team at all.

It’s all worse than this though. It is the total disfunction. During his tenure, Johnson seems to make all his decisions backwards. Years ago, after the butt fumble, the team fired its GM but kept around tattooed dufus Rex Ryan who sabotaged the next regime. Once Rex Ryan was finally terminated, Johnson was so lost that he hired a TV guy named Charlie Casserly to find him a new coach and GM. A few years later the Jets GM hired a new coach (Adam Gase), then a few months later let that coach fire the GM that hired him! Then there was the whole taking advice from his kids and using Madden ratings to veto a trade for Jerry Jeudy.

Johnson even recently said “thinking is overrated” and then honestly compared building a football team to Talladega Nights. The Jets are valued at $6b. 4th generation baby powder Band-Aid guy thinks he’s responsible for that.

2. John Mara, New York Giants: Let the fun begin! John Mara was very publicly humiliated on Hard Knocks this off season thanks to getting cucked by Saquan Barkley and the Eagles. He would have been killed for resigning him but losing Barkley to the Eagles was the worst case scenario. His no-win dilemma would be easier to sympathize with if he had not caused the problem in the first place. In January 2017, the 11-5 playoff bound Giants took a picture on a boat and basically haven’t been good since. They drafted Barkley 2nd overall the following year despite having no replacement for an aging Eli Manning, while passing on Josh Allen and a slew of future pro-bowlers. That year, Eli was benched for Geno Smith despite literally never missing a game only to be unbenched the following week. The next year they over drafted Daniel Jones at #6 who proceeded to either stink or be injured for 5 of the next 6 seasons. The one non-stink season could at best be considered “just fine” but Mara jumped at the chance to overpay him to the tune of 4 years, $160m. It didn’t work out.

That’s bad, but words can’t really show how inept these Giants teams have been since their mid 2000s fluke championships. In-way-over-his-head former coach Joe Judge once called for back-to-back QB sneaks from his own 2-yard line on 2nd and 11 and 3rd and 9 before punting. Almost made it. Then there was the team crying about almost making the playoffs because the Eagles tanked away the final game to Washington. They had 6 wins. Let’s not forget the Giants thinking they were going to get Devonta Smith in the 2021 draft only to get leapfrogged by the Eagles. Somehow the Eagles got Smith, the Cowboys got Parsons, and the Giants got Kadarious Toney. Now they are picking #3 overall and will surely miss out on the top 2 QBs in the draft after inexplicably screwing up getting the top pick by winning their penultimate game. Will they overdraft a QB or bring in some old retread next year? Either way, they will likely screw up positioning themselves to draft Eli’s nephew Arch Manning. I can’t wait to see what Mara, Brian Daboll, and Joe Schoen do next!

My favorite story though is from Fan Appreciation Day 2021. The team went 4-13 and was outscored by 158 points that season, so the Giants wanted to show they cared about their loyal season ticket holders in such a difficult year. In a gesture somehow worse than an office pizza party, fans paying tens of thousands for season tickets were gifted a free medium fountain Pepsi (each word funnier than the last). That’s right, regardless how many tickets you purchased, that’s one Pepsi, redeemable only by the purchaser. It was 37 degrees that day.

BTW, in the last 10 years, the Giants are 4-17 against their archrival, the Philadelphia Eagles. From Tom Coughlin, to Ben McAdoo, to Pat Shurmur, to Joe Judge, and Brian Daboll and then Dave Gettleman and Joe Schoen there has always been the steady guiding hand of John Mara. Never change my firend.

1. Jimmy Haslam, Cleveland Browns: It takes some pretty twisted shit to win this contest, but the results were never in doubt. Haslam is that perfect combination of terrible owner and terrible person who has no peer amongst NFL owners.

Let’s start with the football stuff. The Browns have finished with the worst record in the league an astounding 4 times in the last ten years while tying John Mara’s Giants for 3rd worst record in that stretch (not counting Tepper who doesn’t have enough seasons to qualify). It’s somehow worse than that. The Browns went 1-31 for the 2016 and 2017 seasons including an 0-16. That’s miserable…and yet still not the worst.

The Browns trade and extension of Deshaun Watson may be the single worst move in sports history. The Texans were completely screwed. As the number of lawsuits against Watson rose, public opinion of the team dropped. They couldn’t play him and who would trade for him? He also had a no-trade clause. So, despite the Texans having absolutely no leverage, the Browns sent 3 first round picks and two more picks (one that became Tank Dell) to Cleveland for the QB. That’s bad enough. Then there’s the contract, a 5 year, $230m fully guaranteed abomination. Just for good measure, the Browns backloaded the albatross so he wouldn’t lose any money from the league mandated lengthy suspension everyone assumed was coming. To sum up, Jimmy Haslem paid a king’s ransom for a guy with 20+ sexual assault lawsuits then gave him the most guaranteed money in league history KNOWING he wouldn’t play for a year.

None of this should be surprising from the guy who allegedly presided over a fraud scheme based around ripping off gas rebates from truckers. Jimmy is the son of the guy who started Pilot Flying J. Just another nepo-baby ripping off his customers. He was later under investigation for allegedly bribing company executives to increase the value of his stock by billions before it was sold. He is currently begging to be sued by the city of Cleveland over attempting to move the team out of the city proper.

Epilogue: Watson recently reaggravated his Achillies injury and may miss the 2025 season. Granted the Browns might be better without him, but his cap number is around $72m this year and next. They have no maneuverability with the contract due to the absurd guarantee. Their only possible option for cap relief is unfathomable…extending him. This is laugh out loud funny from the worst owner maybe in all of sports.

(credit to ProFootballReference.com, Spotrac.com, and ESPN.com)