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The Jets need to . . .
make some significant changes moving forward. The status quo is not working.
And one win along with way in a 1-5 season, against a team with both backup star offensive tackles out that lost their #1 receiver early in the game (along with two corners in the second half), should not give you a false sense of where you’re at.
Right now, Sam Darnold is often a one-read quarterback. He needs a lot of work at reading defenses and going through his progressive scans. Against Dallas, almost every successful pass was on his first read. Go back and look at the film. You will see that. But the problem is you can’t expect that to happen every week. That is quarterback utopia. It’s well-documented Darnold had a poor game against New England, and so often couldn’t process what he was seeing from the Patriots’ sophisticated coverages.
After a week of people over-hyping him after a strong performance rife with one-read completions against Dallas, the Jets’ social media machine, and those in the media who told us this would be a close game, got a triple espresso dose of reality.
The QB is a work-in-progress, in his second offense in two years (not great for his development), who people need to pump the hype breaks on.
He will have some good games moving forward against a Jets schedule that gets a lot weaker, but he still has a lot of work to do on reading defenses and seeing the field better. You saw major field vision issues against New England.
And the Jets still have a lot of work to do to fix their damaged football culture. I am still blown away that they would agree to have Darnold mic-up for ESPN’s broadcast. To do that to a 22-year-old kid who already has so much on his plate is surprising. Good football cultures would NEVER do something like that. Who cares if the network demands it. Say no. Bill Belichick would.
And now he’s going to have to live with this “seeing ghosts” sound that will be played over and over for years to come.
Good football cultures would have handled this Kelechi Osemele situation better before this became a major distraction. And all this leaking is wrong. The old GM probably shouldn’t have traded for him, but there has got to be a better way to handle “Shoulder-gate.”
The Jets desperately need a football czar. Their current corporate structure isn’t ideal. The GM, coach and president are all equal. The president thing isn’t a problem because he handles the business side, but the head coach needs a football boss to report to. There is no way around it. Joe Douglas needs to be Gase’s boss. Christopher should take a page from his two opponents in a row – New England’s Bob Kraft and Jacksonville’s Shad Khan, two of the richest men in America. Kraft has Bill Belichick running his football operation, and Khan has Tom Coughlin. Of course the owner is still involved with big decisions, but Belichick and Couglin essentially run the football operation. Gase needs a football czar above him who has to answer to after debacles like the two New England games, and Philly/Cleveland games somebody who will get into the weeds on the football minutiae (not Christopher wheelhouse) and force him to make changes. Right now Douglas can’t tell him squat. They are equals. Bad football set-up.
October 22, 2019
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