CREDIT WHERE IT IS DUE
Gase & Gang have been good at one thing this season: sideline safety
Look, when the Jets, especially the Adam Gase-Christopher Johnson Jets, are doing something differently than the other 31 teams, it’s almost always a safe bet that they are in the wrong. After last week’s Broncos disaster with zero quarterbacks eligible, many teams have started isolating a quarterback just in case an entire clique of them gets wiped out. The Giants, for example, are stashing away players at several key positions this week.
Smart, right? You don’t want to be forced to play a wide receiver under center on zero notice. When Adam Gase says that he’s not considering an emergency quarterback plan, you can see the slow-motion disaster coming.
Except — the Jets have appeared to take the coronavirus more seriously than just about every other team in the league. Gase, who always has an elaborate justification for every failed decision, has a legitimate explanation for this one.
Gase was asked on Wednesday if the team had any plans for a quarantined QB. “Not lately just because we’re not in the building,” the embattled coach said. “Our guys aren’t really together except at practice. They do a good job of keeping their masks on, doing the protocol things. Really all our guys have done that. They’ve done a good job of adhering to what’s asked of them.”
Every other team was having in-person meetings in training camp; Gase’s Jets weren’t. At the time, some of that was attributed to Gase’s infamously prickly personality. But whatever was driving the decision, it dovetails with “the golden rule of the pandemic”: Don’t be indoors with people you don’t live with.
And it’s not just the avoiding of in-person meetings.
I can’t say for certain that Gase has never taken his mask off at a game, but I haven’t noticed him do it while watching the team. In the Getty and Associated Press photo databases, there is not a single picture of him not wearing a mask at a game this season. Every other NFL head coach — with the exception of the interim coaches, who have only coached a few games each — has been photographed taking his mask off at least once during a game to scream at a ref or chat with a player. (Or in a few cases, the coach wears a face shield, which the CDC says is no substitute for a mask or gaiter.)
Even Bill Belichick, who frequently wears two masks, can be seen occasionally pulling down to zero.
It’s probably not a coincidence, then, that the Jets have had just one player hit the Reserve/ COVID list since the regular season started. Practice squad tight end Ross Travis hit the list for a few days in November. (Several Jets went on the list during the summer).
Some of the Jets’ caution can probably be attributed to playing in the New York area, one of the hardest-hit areas in the world by COVID. But their New Jersey counterparts have a quarterback who was seen in a bar with no mask on, plus a coach whose mask wearing has been imperfect.
As Pat Leonard wrote this week, the NFL’s failures on coronavirus are top-down. Is it any surprise that the Ravens had a massive outbreak when their head coach once took off his gaiter to scream in a ref’s face on Monday Night Football? Meanwhile, the Jets were one of four NFL teams that never had to go into “intensive protocols” before the entire league was put into it. When Gase was asked about the switch to intensive protocols last month, he said the team had been “ahead of the curve,” and claimed “it’s nothing that we haven’t done before.” It was the rare Gase boast that may have been mostly true.
Crush Gase for his horrific play-calling, his bizarre prevaricating, his heavy usage of a 37-yearold running back, his self-admitted total failure to develop Sam Darnold — and that just covers the last week or so. He richly deserves it, as well as his impending firing. But the man appears to respect the coronavirus more than just about any of his NFL peers. It’s a low bar, and the only one he’s cleared.