WORKOUT DAY
Legit or not Kaepernick will perform for NFL scouts today Enunwa incident is latest example that Jets players don’t respect or trust Gase
Adam Gase displayed poor leadership for unofficially the 1,969th time Friday with an arrogance and defiance that simply reinforced that he hasn’t learned a damn thing from his failings in Miami.
The Jets head coach took a passive-aggressive shot at a former team captain, pretended that there are no communication issues between the players and the organization when clearly there are, and acted oblivious to the world around him.
The morning after respected veteran Quincy Enunwa blasted the organization for fining him for a pair of missed rehab treatments, Gase did what Gase does when times get tough: Avoid accountability.
“Everything like that we’ll handle in-house,” Gase said Friday. “We have a way we do things. That’s the way it is.”
That way of doing things has prompted three injured players to take action against the organization in the past four weeks. Kelechi Osemele and Luke Falk have filed grievances against the Jets through the NFL Players Association.
Gase, who alienated Dolphins players before he was fired 11 months ago, went so far as to take a similar shot at Osemele and Enunwa, too.
“We handle our stuff inhouse,” Gase said. “Some people choose to use social media. There’s probably a reason they’re doing that.”
It was classic Gase, who has participated in disparaging his own players behind the scenes since duping Christopher Johnson into hiring him in January, according to sources. The notion of Gase handling anything in-house is laughable. He has thrown Jets players under the bus privately from the moment he arrived. He can’t help himself. It’s who he is.
He’s a terrible leader. The shame of it is that this should have been a layup for him. Enunwa admittedly erred by not notifying the team that he was taking out his wife, who is a veteran, to lunch on Veterans Day and had to take care of an emergency at home on another day.
But Gase predictably blew it by still fining the player the max amount and posting the amount and infraction on a board at the team facility for everyone to see. Gase posted player fines for everyone to see at the Dolphins facility too. He adopted the tactic at some point during his failed tenure.
Good leaders navigate through crisis with aplomb. Gase has a knack for inflaming the situation through his words and deeds. He is a master at making a bad situation worse.
The coach admitted that he still hasn’t spoken to Enunwa after the former captain voiced his displeasure.
Sound familiar? He said the same thing during the Osemele standoff, peddling a fairytale about how it’s tough to cross paths with players since the Jets facility is so large. Meanwhile, the trainers’ room is literally next door to the coaches’ offices.
Enunwa tweeted that teammates told him that the team’s handling of the matter was “f—ked up.”
Although a few teammates said some obligatory nice things about Gase this week in the wake of Johnson’s public vote of confidence, the reality is that too many Jets players don’t respect Gase at all. They don’t view him as a leader in any way, shape or form.
Perhaps that should be the larger concern for this starcrossed franchise. Players have become emboldened to speak out against the organization because they believe the head coach is nothing more than a used car salesman.
Gase is staining the franchise one poor choice at a time.