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The New York Jets Coaching Situation

The New York Jets have better personnel than the record indicates. I’m not saying they haven’t earned the record they have. What I am saying is that a team with some great players can’t function because the coaching has been substandard for most of the season.

Todd Bowles gave the Jets some temporary stability. His flaw is he’s loyal to a fault. In the Patriots loss quarterback Tom Brady noticed that his former teammate, Darrelle Revis was wincing during plays. The Jets coaching staff basically let the greatest quarterback of all-time know that a key player was hurt and like a shark, Brady attacked.

Brady struck twice for two touchdowns against the Jets. The last one was the final blow. The Jets came into the season with a top-ranked defense, according to many of the experts. Now 3-8, it’s been clear that Kacy Rodgers defense has failed miserably. Not the defensive line, they’ve been good, but everywhere else. Depending on the list you use the Jets are about the 21st best or worst defense in the NFL. That’s not good enough.

Coming into this season the Jets offensive line was ranked 24th by Pro Football Focus. I wrote about it and some fans took me to task. I did bring up the aging Nick Mangold and everything else in-between. So where does the offensive line rank today? 19th (according to football outsiders website), ok, it’s a bit better but that’s still not good enough.

The offensive line and defensive backfield are two of the most important units of a football team. The Jets aren’t even ranked in the middle of the NFL in either one. Again, you can blame the players, the GM, but right now it’s on the coaching staff. I’d give the head coach one more season to fix this. He’ll have to make some changes to his staff.

The Quarterback Situation

Ryan Fitzpatrick’s run as a Jet will be a small blip on the radar. It will be looked at the same way as Matt Robinson is now in the lexicon of Jets quarterbacks. He got paid and he didn’t deliver. Last year was a good one for him except the team didn’t make the playoffs mainly because he had a terrible last game against the Buffalo Bills. This year has been a disaster. He’s an NFL backup. That’s what he is.

Bryce Petty needs to play for the rest of the season. The Jets need to see what he has or doesn’t have. Christian Hackenberg (drafted in the second round) is a long-term project. Going into next season the Jets will likely sign or trade for a quarterback who has a few years left. Maybe that’s Tony Romo, who knows? They need to draft another quarterback this season. Do we have faith in Mike Maccagnan and his staff? The Jets have had a bad history drafting at this position and so far Petty is the only real hope they have today. Get a quarterback in the middle rounds. Other teams can do it. Dak Prescott was ranked a 5.46 coming out of Mississippi State going into the NFL draft. He was drafted 135th overall. The Jets took corner back Juston Burris with the 118th overall pick. He’s played in 11 games. He has 9 solo tackles and he hasn’t played in 3 of the last four weeks. Sure, a lot of teams passed on Prescott. But the Jets have made an art form of underperforming in the NFL Draft and it’s starting to cost them, again.

Russ_Cohen
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One thought on “The New York Jets Coaching Situation

  1. Great article Russ, Regarding Fritz. I still blame management for the late signing. They guy basically missed training came and there were lots of rumors stating that he was not in shape when he finally came in. This would account for the poor play the first half of the season. I also agree that the two failures this season has been the offensive line and the defensive backfield. Each week the DF backfield fails in the 4th quarter with the game on the line. This is attributed to bad coaching and aging players (revis).

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