What Can Mike Maccagnan Do to Get the Jets Back on Track in 2015?

The New York Jets have finally gotten the ball rolling on filling their biggest vacancies in the organization at head coach and general manager. With the law of inertia on their side, the Jets must now make sure that they continue to make progress.

On Tuesday night, the Jets, via their official Twitter account, announced that they hired Houston Texans director of college scouting Mike Maccagnan as their new GM.

Maccagnan worked with Jets consultant Charley Casserly and remained with the Texans from 2000-2015. After 16 years in Houston, the New Jersey native is coming home. This time, instead of hiring a salary-cap specialist (as they did with former GMs Mike Tannenbaum and John Idzik), the Jets went with a GM who has a background in scouting.

"We interviewed a number of impressive, qualified candidates, but Mike Maccagnan clearly stood out," Jets owner Woody Johnson said in a statement. "Mike's attention to detail, strong personnel background and collaborative approach to evaluating players made it clear that he is the right choice to be the next General Manager of the New York Jets."

Need	Current starter(s)
QB	Geno Smith
CB	Dee Milliner, Dexter McDougle, Antonio Allen
OLB	Calvin Pace, Quinton Coples
OL	D'Brickashaw Ferguson, Brian Winters, Nick Mangold, Willie Colon, Breno Giacomini

Whether or not he's the right choice, we may not find out right away.

Right now, the Jets do not appear ready to contend any time soon. They have deficiencies at cornerback, outside linebacker, offensive line and quarterback. The latter of those four positions will be the one under the largest magnifying glass, as the Jets have swung and wildly missed twice at quarterback with Mark Sanchez (first round, 2009) and Geno Smith (second round, 2013). 

There have been some pretty big quarterback controversies with the Jets in the recent past, and if there are any on the horizon, ESPN's Rich Cimini has answers as to who will be responsible for what within the Jets' power structure:

The Jets must be hopeful that Maccagnan's background in scouting will immediately come in handy. Before taking his post with the Texans, he was a scout for the Washington Redskins from 1995-2000. 

The Jets must also be hopinig that Maccagnan can make wise use of an abundance of salary-cap space. According to NFL salary-cap website OverTheCap.com, the Jets have $15,261,199 in cap space from 2014 that they can roll over into the 2015 offseason and could have roughly $49,160,074 to put toward adding talent to their roster. 

But before Maccagnan gets started on adding talent, he must first decide which impending free agents will be kept. There are some high-profile names up for new contracts, including linebacker David Harris, quarterback Michael Vick, guard Willie Colon, cornerback Kyle Wilson, safety Dawan Landry and defensive tackle Damon Harrison. 

The abundance of cap space should be instrumental in keeping most, if not all of those free agents. 

The bigger concern for Maccagnan should be the draft, where the Jets have failed miserably in the past half-decade, dramatically setting the team back in terms of depth and development. Improving that area of the team should be made easier for Maccagnan, as the Jets own the sixth overall pick in the draft. 

But none of that starts until Maccagnan finds out who his head coach will be. Seattle Seahawks defensive coordinator Dan Quinn and Arizona Cardinals defensive coordinator Todd Bowles are seen as two favorites for the job.

Whoever is hired as the head caoch, they can't pull the Jets out of their nosedive unless they are given the proper flight crew. Maccagnan has a lot of work to do.