Now this is something you don’t see everyday — New York Jets owner Woody Johnson on Thursday publicly blasted a report by NFL Media — the company that Johnson partially owns.
New York Jets’ Woody Johnson Calls NFL Network Report ‘Nonsense’
Johnson took to X in an attempt to set the record straight about an explosive allegation made by NFL employee Colleen Wolfe on the Around the NFL podcast earlier in the week.
Wolfe, citing a source, said that Johnson and embattled Jets coach Robert Saleh engaged in a “very heated conversation” at an NFL Owners Meeting reception on Monday.
The party, which PFN attended, is open to hundreds of credentialed NFL luminaries, staff, and credentialed members of the media.
Yet, no one who was there has publicly said they witnessed what Wolfe alleges happened: That Saleh and his boss had a “super awkward” conversation in the middle of everyone.
All this nonsense about a heated argument between Coach Saleh and me at the League Meeting is absolutely false. It is yet another irresponsible report from NFL Network. Please disregard.
— Woody Johnson (@woodyjohnson4) March 28, 2024
That didn’t pass the sniff test when Wolfe reported it. And it’s even less plausible now that Johnson has gone on the record.
“All this nonsense about a heated argument between Coach Saleh and me at the League Meeting is absolutely false,” Johnson wrote on X. “It is yet another irresponsible report from NFL Network. Please disregard.”
Johnson’s statement is interesting for a number of reasons.
First, it’s a direct pushback on information disseminated on a platform that the Jets and the league’s 31 teams collectively own. What’s more, Johnson’s comments suggest he’s been long unhappy with NFL Media’s reporting on his franchise.
There’s no doubt that Saleh is on the hot seat after compiling an 18-33 record in his three seasons as Jets coach.
“They’ve seen me about as mad as I could be with what was going on with the offense particularly,” Johnson said at NFL Honors last month. “We’ve got all this talent and we’ve got to deploy talent properly. So I think they all got the message.
“This is it, this is the time to go. We’ve got to produce this year, we have to produce this year.”
But if Johnson and Saleh do have beef, they apparently plan to keep it behind closed doors.
UPDATE 6:10 p.m. ET: On X (formerly Twitter), Wolfe apologized for and reneged on her comments from the Around the NFL podcast.
— Colleen Wolfe (@ColleenWolfe) March 28, 2024
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