Consistently on the wrong side of public comments made by former safety Jamal Adams, New York Jets coach Adam Gase seems to have won the battle. But with the end result of the ‘war’ unknown at this time, only time will tell if Gase comes out on top.
After feuding with safety Jamal Adams, to the point where Adams ended up asking for a trade due to his lack of trust and confidence in his head coach, the former LSU Tiger was shipped off to the Seattle Seahawks for a package that included safety Bradley McDougald and two first-round selections.
While that return package is quite large, especially for a safety, players like Adams do not grow on trees, but the relationship between Adams and the coaching staff for the Jets was seen as irreparable, so a trade was a foregone conclusion. But does the departure, of what can easily be seen as the best player on the Jets, provide Gase a heightened sense of job security?
Dating back to his time as the head coach of the Miami Dolphins, Gase’s reputation among Jets players has been regarded as very rough, brash, and, in some cases, a reason to want to leave the team outright.
“I don't feel like he's the right leader for this organization to reach the Promised Land,” Adams told the New York Daily News in an interview earlier in July. “As a leader, what really bothers me is that he doesn't have a relationship with everybody in the building.”
Those comments are quite telling coming from a player in a public capacity, showcasing how he truly felt all while not being concerned with any sort of ramifications that could have been handed down by the team. For Adams, it never seemed to be about him and his role on the team, but instead, it was more focused on the type of leader that the Jets had, something that players seem to rarely speak out about.
But with Adams out of the picture, the abilities for Gase to remain the head coach for the 2020 season and beyond looks to be looking better and better by the day, especially with the comments made by Jets general manager Joe Douglas.
“I especially believe in coach Gase, I feel he’s the right coach to lead this team,” Douglas said on a conference call with the media to start this week. “Having watched him work last year, having seen him and his staff overcame a 1-7 start and finish the way we did. I feel really good about where we are with him and his leadership.”
Public support, or lack thereof as we have seen in this situation, paints a very clear picture of how both a player and an organization are feeling and handling a situation. Douglas’ quick ascension to Gase’s corner shows exactly how the Jets felt about Adams.
Gase has been fighting a losing battle, as it has seemed, ever since the team had signed Le’Veon Bell, before he ended up taking the HC role with the Jets. Coming into the role, it had looked like Bell was primed to be able to shed any sort of negative labels that he had conjured up after leaving the Pittsburgh Steelers in a very unceremonious way, yet Gase seemingly took it upon himself to ruin what bit of chemistry that Bell and the organization had built in the beginning of his NYJ career.
Gase has remained quite bullish on Bell’s involvement in the team’s offensive scheme, as his 2019 Jets season was marred by inconsistencies, injuries, and just a general uneasy feeling about his tenure in the Big Apple. Commenting recently on the status of the rushing attack for the upcoming ‘20 season, Gase made it very well known that while Bell may be seen as the best running back at his disposal on the roster, the carries will not necessarily follow.
“I do think we have some guys that can help maybe lessen the load on [Bell] to where it's not all on him,” Gase said during an appearance on ESPN's “Flight Deck” podcast. “Hopefully, we can get some of the younger backs to where we can make a good one-two punch to where we can really excel instead of feeling like it's just all on him all the time.”
Bell’s 21 touches per game for the Jets were four lower than what he averaged when he suited up for the Steelers, and while injuries surely contributed to that decrease, it was also the staff taking the ball out of his hands a bit, as well as the absolute trainwreck that the offensive line was.
Frank Gore, the ageless wonder, was brought in this offseason as a backup RB option, and Florida Gators rookie La’Mical Perine joined Bell, Josh Adams, Trenton Cannon, and Kenneth Dixon in the RB ranks. While a full RB room means that there are a lot of mouths to feed, Bell still remains the top dog with the Jets, but look for Gore and Perine to vulture some touches away that Bell should earn.
Regardless of how the offensive and/or defensive sides of the ball end up turning out, the fact that Gase has the backing of his front office, his job security looks to be quite solid moving forward. Does he deserve to remain as the leader of the Jets? He has yet to prove that he will be the guy to help dig them out of a playoff drought, and even with the big amounts of money that they have thrown at players through free agency, the fact still remains that Gase is unable to do what needs to be done with a more-than-capable roster.
The reason that Bell has seemingly been on the wrong side of Gase ever since they both arrived, added to the fact that eventually caused the departure of Adams, shows that things are running as status quo for the Jets, uneven and incapable of getting out of their own way. And if Gase continues to steer the ship down the path that they are currently on, then things will most likely not improve.
At the end of the day, if Gase continues to have the support of Douglas, then the writing is on the wall – he will remain the coach of the team for the foreseeable future. But the fact also remains that he has yet to show anything that demonstrates he deserves to remain the head coach, and that he may be earning favoritism from the overall signal callers.
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