GM Mike Maccagnan runs the Jets on caffeine, and lots of it

Mike Maccagnan runs on Dunkin, among other things.

Many great character in history have had their props, from Abraham Lincoln’s stove pipe hat to Winston Churchill’s cigar to countless others. For Maccagnan, the New York Jets general manager, it will be the ever present cup of coffee in his hand. He has been on the job for seven months and already the coffee clutched in his hand has become his shtick.

He admits that he drinks six-to-eight cups of coffee a day, something he is trying to cut back on but might be a bit of a challenge given the long hours required during the NFL season. But while he strolls around the fields at the team’s training facility, receiving cheers from fans and mingling with the media, the coffee cup was present in his left hand.

It is a disposable cup, white and cardboard with the initials ‘MM’ written in black marker on the side. Throughout offseason workouts and minicamp and now training camp, that cup of java is there.

But don’t think that it straight-up black coffee in there, the kind that grizzled veterans of NFL front offices drink and newspaper reporters claim to keep in their mugs. Nope. Maccagnan dips into some of the new trends including flavored coffees.

Someone from the Jets front office brought him one on Saturday from a coffee shop nearby the team’s facility.

“Today it’s a little bit of skim milk and I think it’s vanilla coffee,” Maccagnan said.

On Sunday, he was dialed up with Dunkin Donuts coffee and scoffed at the idea that it might be half-caffeine.