New York Jets head coach Adam Gase is battling the world right now. There’s no chance it’s unfair criticism at the moment.
The New York Jets always seem to find themselves in this situation. They have a solid defense and no offense. Adam Gase was supposed to turn that all around. He was supposed to be the QB guru to lead this team into the future.
Instead, the offense has taken a huge step back. It can’t be attributed to just the injuries, either. Sam Darnold has arguably regressed under Gase. His overall stats are similar to last year, while his QBR is lower.
Some of that is on Darnold and how he’s grown to this point. However, most of the blame should fall on the offensive-minded head coach. The Jets offense is poorly-schemed and the team is rarely prepared. They’ve put together some truly awful performances this year.
They set an NFL record in ineptitude this season under Gase. The Jets became the first team in NFL history to lose to two win-less teams who had a record of 0-7 or worse.
Gase’s issues go way deeper than just this season, though. He has been always been a failed head coach. He’s also never been the QB guru that the franchise tried to pass him off as.
Wins and losses
Adam Gase has a career record of 28-35. Only two active head coaches—with at least a full season under the belt—own worse records. Pat Shurmur showcases a record of 18-45 in his career and Matt Patricia sits at 9-20-1.
For New Yorkers, that bit of information is depressing. Interestingly, there’s a big difference between Gase and Shurmur: the former has lost 28 games by two scores or more. Gase has as many losses by double-digits as he does wins. That’s absurd. He’s only lost seven games in his career by one score. His teams either win or their not competitive at all. That’s the mark of an incredibly ill-prepared coach.
Even Shurmur only has 21 losses by double-digits. Shurmur has lost 33.9% of his games by double-digits, while Gase has lost 44.4% the same way.
How Gase has a job with that kind of record is tough to diagnose. His teams get blown out in nearly half of the games he coaches.
Meanwhile, recently fired Panther head coach Ron Rivera has a career record of 76-63. He has 27 career double-digit losses, too. That’s 19.4% of games he’s coached. Somehow, he’s out a job and Gase still has his.
Offensive stats
The reason Adam Gase got the Jets job in the first place was his offensive mind. He had a reputation as a QB whisperer and offensive genius. He got that reputation during his time with Peyton Manning. When Manning was his QB, he was great.
He was the offensive coordinator for one of the best offenses in the NFL’s history. However, that reputation doesn’t hold up when Manning is removed from the picture.
Gase took over as the Bears offensive coordinator in 2015. The team improved in DVOA, from 14th in 2014 to 10th in 2015. Jay Cutler didn’t perform out of the ordinary. That Bears offense didn’t have a receiver or running back reach 900 yards.
That season, got Gase his first head coach job with the Dolphins. That was his best coaching season ever. He improved the Dolphins offense from 22nd in the NFL in DVOA to 14th. He also got the team to the playoffs.
However, he did it on the back of his running back, Jay Ajayi, not his QB. In fact, Ryan Tannehill regressed in many ways under Gase. He had fewer passing yards per game and a much higher interception rate. Meanwhile, his adjusted yards per attempt and his TD rate were nearly identical. The only thing that got better for Tannehill was his completion percentage.
Sound familiar?
Sam Darnold is going through the same regression as Tannehill did under Gase. It’s truly amazing how he is ruining a second QB in the exact same fashion.
The Dolphins offense fell off a cliff in 2017. Gase’s unit was 27th in the NFL in DVOA in 2017. It didn’t get much better in 2018 when the Dolphins offense ranked 26th.
Now, Gase is in New York and Tannehill is in Tennessee. With the Titans, and away from Gase, Tannehill has all of a sudden become an above-average QB again. That’s not a coincidence.
Not when the Jets offense is ranked 31st in the NFL in DVOA. Not when Sam Darnold is regressing in the same ways Tannehill did. It’s a tough sell to claim Gase’s offensive genius reputation is legitimate. He’s had more offenses ranked bottom-10 in the league than top-10.
Connection to players
The worst of it, though, is his communication. In Miami, reports surfaced about disgruntled Dolphins players, helping lead to Gase’s ouster. The Jets hired him two weeks after that happened.
Now, a couple of Jets players have entered the same disgruntled category, Kelechi Osemele and Quincy Enunwa.
Osemele was angry that the team was forcing him to play through a torn rotator cuff. He claimed the Jets knew about the injury, how serious it was and that they didn’t care. That’s on the head coach. It’s his job to decide who plays. It’s on him to sort out how players feel and if they can play through injuries.
The Enunwa situation was even worse. The Jets fined Enunwa for missing scheduled doctor’s appointments to take his wife out for lunch on veterans day and other good excuses. He deserved to be fined for missing those appointments without informing the team. That’s not the issue.
The issue is that another one of Gase’s players allowed his frustrations to become public and that’s one of the last things an NFL head coach wants.
The Jets need a culture change. They need a culture change as badly as any team in professional sports. Hopefully, general manager Joe Douglas is the right man for the job, since, as of right now, nobody knows if Adam Gase is that guy.
