Tom Krasovic: For fans of NFL’s Jets and Browns, Owner’s Jail feels like a lifetime sentence

The end of the NFL season has brought another round of head coach firings.

Don’t fret for Pete Carroll, who was cut loose Monday. He’s due two years’ salary. And he won’t have to watch Raiders film anymore.

The Browns handed a get-out-of-jail-free card to Kevin Stefanski, while the Jets, curiously, implied they’ll retain Aaron Glenn.

Rather than delve into all of the Black Monday coaching carnage, let’s talk about Owner’s Jail.

Owner’s Jail, to put it nicely, is the predicament of NFL fans whose team is owned by someone whose stewardship does not inspire great optimism.

Don’t err by thinking these fans can just walk out of the jail, reclaiming their Sundays for something fun.

There’s no giving up fandom. The adhesive that bonds a child to a sports team is one of the most powerful elements in the universe. These folks won’t desert their teams, no matter how many NFL Sundays end in heartache.

Jets and Browns fans have been on lockdown for a while.

We begin with Woody Johnson, who has owned the Jets since 2000.

Johnson’s run started out well — six playoff berths in 10 years, including two playoff wins against San Diego — but in the 15 years that have followed, the Jets have done a fine job of demonstrating that a big-market NFL team can match the futility of MLB’s worst small-market teams.

With a .347 win rate and no playoff appearances over those 15 years, the Jets make a case for being the NFL’s gloomiest franchise. They’ve also been incredibly dull, scoring the fewest points in the NFL across those 15 years.

The Jets’ 3-14 season that ended Sunday served up new levels of dysfunction — last-place finishes in point differential, turnover differential and yardage differential.

The most Jetsy of Jets feats was also achieved: the 2025 Jets did not intercept a single pass in the 17 games, despite their head coach being a former NFL cornerback who had 41 career pickoffs.

Johnson doesn’t seem to getting any better at his job.

Last January, he hired Glenn, a former NFL assistant coach, to his first head coaching job and gave him a five-year contract.

Jets fans now have to hope — what else can they do? — that Glenn wasn’t as overmatched as he appeared to be in his first season.

Johnson, 78, has some skills that may work better outside of running an NFL team. He’s the fourth-generation heir to the Johnson & Johnson consumer products fortune, reports Bloomberg. He owned a cable provider. From 2017 to 2021, he was the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom, during which time his brother, Christopher Johnson, was the Jets’ chairman and CEO. That didn’t go well for Jets fans, either. The team’s win rate of .272 during that time tied the Jaguars for last in the NFL.

Here’s a Hail Mary pass to fix the Jets:

NFL higher-ups not employed by other teams recommend to Johnson a sharp, dispassionate football executive who can counsel him and general manager Darren Mougey — a former San Diego State quarterback and receiver who was hired three days after Glenn and whose draft picks and two in-season trades sparked some optimism.

And: Johnson chooses to devote more time to activities not involving the Jets.

The fight against lupus and diabetes is one of many good causes he supports. If he hankers for vicarious sports success, the University of Arizona alum can get plush accommodations at the school’s men’s basketball games, a sure winner on most nights.

Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam have overseen an NFL franchise for about half as long as Johnson has. They’ve erred often, and also don’t seem to be improving.

Under Stefanski, the Browns did reach a pair of postseasons. His first team’s wild card playoff victory, a shootout against the Steelers, was the franchise’s first playoff win in 26 years.

So much for the highlights. The Haslam Era shows a 34.5% win rate, better than only the Johnson Jets. If touchdown passes are biscuits, Browns fans at the famed “Dog Pound” fan section often have gone hungry, as only the Jets have scored fewer points than the Browns in the 13 years.

The Haslams were pivotal to the catastrophic trade for scandal-plagued quarterback Deshaun Watson and the decision to pledge Watson the most guaranteed money, by far, in NFL history.

Stefanski’s replacement will be the Haslams’ eighth head coach, counting interim hires.

The same medicine prescribed here for the Jets’ Johnson applies to Jimmy and Dee, husband and wife, each 71.

As Tennessee alums, they might do more good for the Browns by devoting the bulk of their sports-love-energy toward the Volunteers’ powerful baseball program and other sports teams. Furthering their reported philanthropic efforts, such as their support for cardiovascular research and medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, could be rewarding, too.

Browns fans deserve a jailbreak.

The Browns’ next coach won’t inherit a franchise quarterback, but he will inherit a broken-down QB — Watson — whose contract will count $80 million against the team’s salary cap next season.

Until the Haslams can get their game right, it’ll be more of the same. The Dog Pound’s inhabitants will do more yelping than woofing.