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You really shouldn’t confuse these things . . .
A reporter asked the Jets’ coach and players on Monday about the team’s morale.
Let me get into this a little.
First off, for a 3-7, there doesn’t seem to be an infighting on this team. no unnamed quotes with teammates stabbing each other in the back, or unnamed players ripping the coach or coaches.
In the locker room and on the practice field, they really seem to get along well. They seem very spirited on the practice field.
It’s really not one of those struggling teams where the landscape has turned toxic.
And I like I have said before, I know it’s a convenient, perhaps lazy angle, to say they the quit against Buffalo.
I didn’t see that.
And this bring me to what is the problem with this team.
It’s not quitting, it’s no morale, it’s not backstabbing, it’s that they are a very undisciplined team that too often plays sloppy football. From the blown coverages against the pass, to the poor gap control against the run, to the delay of game penalties on offense, this is just a team with players who too often mentally short-circuit and blow assignments.
This team is too often bad at situational football and attention to detail.
This has nothing to do with quitting or morale.
We keep hearing that they had a good week of practice after losses.
After hearing this one too many times, I finally felt I need to ask a player about this, because I don’t feel a good week of practice means a heck of a lot in relation to how a team plays in the game. Why? Because in practice, you are preparing for what you think an opponent is going to do, but last time I checked, they don’t FedEx you their game plan. Hey it’s great to have a good week of practice, but what do you do when they throw you curve ball after curve ball on game day, like Buffalo offensive coordinator Brian Daboll did? How do you adjust on the fly? Against the Bills, the Jets’ players and coaches didn’t do this very well.
Like Mike Tyson liked to say, “Everyone has a plan until they are punched in the mouth.”
To me, this Jets team, while close-knit, is not good as a collective group not good at adjusting on the fly.
So I asked Josh McCown, who will likely be a coach when he retires, why this team hasn’t been good at marrying a good week of practice with playing well on game day.
“Every guy has to make sure he’s doing everything he can to internalize the game-plan and then from the last day of practice Friday to the walk-through Saturday and on into (the game),” McCown said. “The preparation never stops and we’ve got to continue to work to do that and guys have to look at, okay, what am I doing? What can I do extra and different that may help myself be better prepared? I know that’s certainly the case for myself and see whatever we can do to make this team better and help us win, that’s what it’s about.”
So the bottom line is this is a close team, morale is fine, but it’s just got major issues with game-day execution for a number of reasons, including one obvious factor, one key offensive learning the job. The Jets’ offense it he polar opposite to what we saw in that KC-LA game in terms of tempo. Those offenses operate at a fast pace, the Jets’ offense seems to be a slow motion.
November 20, 2018
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