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Mike Maccagnan held his mid-season press conference today, and the biggest thing I got out of it is . . .
they are trying to serve two masters.
He said repeatedly “we are balancing short and long term.”
In other words, they are trying to develop a young QB and a few other young players (like Nathan Shepperd) on the job, but are also trying to win.
Perhaps this works some times, but it’s very hard, especially when you start a rookie QB.
Several times during the presser, he emphasized, in relation to the inconsistency, “We are a very young team.”
But I’m not sure if that excuse flies for some of the blown assignment and penalty issues.
For instance, last week, they had a ton of pre-snap penalties committed by veteran offensive linemen. The only guy you might say it’s a veteran is Brandon Shell, but he’s in his third year, so it’s not like he just arrived.
So all these pre-snap mistakes weren’t a youth thing.
And honestly folks, it wasn’t that loud in Chicago. It wasn’t like Seattle.
By the way, a high-ranking Jets source told me today the team feels that two of the false starts should have been called on the Chicago Bears, not the Jets.
But the Jets have to play a lot more disciplined and focused football this week, and moving forward.
Because while Todd Bowles should be cut some slack since he’s starting a rookie QB (if the owners and Ira Axselrad were on-board with it, which I sense they were), the thing that could land him on the hot-seat is continued sloppy play.
Whether it’s penalties or blown assignments, this is just undisciplined football, and a bad reflection on the coach. For the third time this year, an inside linebacker had a major blown coverage on a running back that led to a big play – Miami’s Frank Gore, Jacksonville’s T.J. Yeldon and last week Chicago’s Tarik Cohen. All three situations – nobody near the player – the Yeldon and Cohen plays resulted in long touchdowns, and the Gore play was a gain of 20 on third-and-19 late in the game with the Jets attempting to get the ball back to try and tie the game.
Another example of blown assignments are on the myriad long run plays yielded – major gap control issues.
Todd needs for his team to play smarter, cleaner football to help his job security. Because if the sloppiness continues, the media and fan heat on the coach will intensity, and this will get the attention of Chris and Ira. This organization doesn’t like bad PR.
I found it interesting that Maccagnan today was willing to talk about the job Todd was doing.
While he did offer the caveat that the record isn’t what any of them wants, he did add, “I think the coaches have done a good job.”
While this is an innocuous quote, in the past, he has said he can’t really comment on the job Todd is doing because he didn’t report to him, but today he did.
Honestly, from what I heard from a league source, Mike might be a little ahead of Todd right now in the power structure. I get the sense that if Bowles was fired, which I’m not saying he will be, or should be, Mike would be very involved in finding the replacement, not some outside consultants.
But Todd can prevent that from happening by his team playing more games like Detroit and Denver and less like Chicago and Jacksonville.
November 1, 2018
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