DON’T YOU Jets DC Williams’ decision to bench

No matter what becomes of the Jets in the next 10, 20 or even 30 years, no matter how much agita this star-crossed franchise puts its die-hards through, they’ll never have another employee like Jamal Adams.

So, it was jarring to see Gregg Williams, days after needlessly antagonizing Odell Beckham Jr., benching Adams in the waning minutes of Gang Green’s primetime blowout loss to the Browns on Monday. The brash defensive coordinator embarrassed his Pro Bowl player, who embodies everything that is good about this perpetually wayward organization.

Nobody works harder, cares more and lives and breathes football like the third-year safety. Amid a green-and-white sea of dysfunction, back-stabbing, prevarication and power struggles, Adams is pure. He has no agenda. He cares. Most of all, he produces.

Although Adams admitted that he was overzealous on a pair of back-toback penalties (offsides and encroachment) on the Browns’ final drive, Williams should not have pulled him.

“Yeah, I was benched,” Adams said on WFAN Tuesday. “They benched me. I tried to anticipate a play, which I anticipated wrong. And I was benched. Hey, it happens. I got to continue to do my job to the best of my ability as well as help lead the guys around me.”

Adams’ decision to remove his affiliation with the Jets on his Twitter bio might have a caused a stir on Tuesday, but the benching was much more troubling. On the surface, benching Adams, who had sat out for just 14 of 2,289 career snaps entering the game, for the final five snaps might not seem like a big deal. However, it sent precisely the wrong message.

“You’re talking about a guy that is extremely competitive,” Adam Gase said Tuesday. “He wants to win as much as anybody I’ve ever been around. I’m sure at that point in the game, he was extremely frustrated. When it gets like that… and you want to have a positive impactful play and the score is a little lopsided like that, you get a little overaggressive. I think him coming out the game was to kind of settle him down and get his head wrapped around, ‘Hey, let’s just go do our job.’… I thought it was a smart idea as far as far kind of trying to do that and get him settled down.”

It was actually the opposite of a smart idea.

Adams is the heart and soul of these Jets. He isn’t a quitter. He finishes what he starts. He