If the New York Jets want to make multiple Super Bowl runs, Mike McCarthy may not be the answer. He may just be a short-term fix for a young team.
The New York Jets are in the midst of a coaching search. There’s a narrative out there that Mike McCarthy would be good for this young Jets team. However, the narrative is slightly off-base.
McCarthy is a Super Bowl winning coach with 10 postseason victories, and that experience would be good for a young team to glean from. However, four of those wins came in the magical Super Bowl run, and the Packers have been run out of the playoffs in their first game three times with McCarthy as head coach.
According to Jimmy Kempsi of the Philly Voice, the Jets have been among the oldest NFL teams in three of the last six seasons, and that includes 2018, when they were tied for 16th in terms of average age. McCarthy may actually be good at building, but not maintaining a Super Bowl championship team, though.
According to number drawn from the aforementioned article and with supplementary information from Pro Football Reference, the average age of the Packers has been 26 or older three times.
While they have been a playoff team in nine of his 13 seasons in Green Bay, his oldest team (average age of 26.3 years old) was in 2010 — the year they won the Super Bowl — and in every subsequent season since then, the average age of the Packers has been below 26 with no return trip to the Super Bowl.
Making the playoffs and winning a Super Bowl is nice, but once Jets fans get that elusive championship, they will want more. If a long-term answer is what the Jets are looking for, McCarthy might not be the right fit, given his record with youth.