TODD’S GIFT
Having been delivered Darnold, Bowles now must prove he can deliver as a coach
AT A TIME in our sporting culture when “patience” is considered a four-letter word, when a coach’s shelf life is roughly the equivalent of a carton of milk left out of the refrigerator, the Jets went a different way. They took a different path. Christopher Johnson would have been well within his rights to cut bait and start over again. He didn’t do that. He kept Mike Maccagnan. He kept Todd Bowles. He kept intact a brain trust that is 10-22 across the past two seasons, 10-23 if you want to toss in the season finale in 2015 that ended so badly in Buffalo, the playoffs within grasp and the Jets jumping off the team bus on the Thruway somewhere well short of Orchard Park. GMs get fired for that all the time in 2018. Coaches get fired for that.
Maccagnan kept his job as GM and he had already made the most of that second chance, delivering the deal that became Sam Darnold, recalibrating the roster from top to bottom, setting them up to make profound additions next year with a glut of saved-up salary-cap room.
Now it’s Bowles turn to prove the faith placed in him was justified.
Starting Monday at Detroit’s Ford Field, it is Bowles who will attract almost as much of the spotlight as his ballyhooed quarterback, because Darnold, at the least, has seized the confidence and the optimism of a lion’s share of the Jets’ constituency. Jets fans have dreamed of Darnold for a year, got him, and will almost surely deal with his learning curve.
Bowles is another story. If Met Life Stadium wasn’t exactly filled last year with the kind of kill-the-coach bile of past generations — poor Joe Walton; “Joe Must Go” just had a special ring to it, and there’s just no corresponding cleverness to either “Todd” or “Bowles” — it wasn’t exactly as if Jets fans had to be toweled off from the excitement of Bowles’ contract extension last Dec. 29. It’s really a simple equation: Bowles has to be better — significantly better — at his job than he’s been so far. Even he knows that much.
“It’s just a no-excuse business,” Bowles said in the days after last year’s 5-11 was over. “You win games or you don’t.
“Ultimately we were 5-11, and that’s not going to cut it in this league. We can’t fall into that trap of thinking this was a success because we surpassed the 0-16 expectation. In reality, we are 5-11 and we missed the playoffs, and that’s not where we want to be.”
Look, in some ways, the old coach will be graded on a curve the same way the new quarterback will be. Can the Jets’ season be a success with, say, six or seven wins? In Darnold’s case, as long as we look back in December and see significant progress, absolutely.
Bowles? Same deal. He needs to be better at clock management. He needs to be better at making adjustments, both at halftime and on the fly. It would be nice if he started to be even a little bit aggressive with his in-game decisions instead of always erring on the side of caution. And while many of his players expressed joy at his retention last December, that has to translate into tangible coached-up performance.
The dearth of talent and depth may be the ultimate road block between the Jets and a serious playoff run; it is on the coach to make sure that is the only impediment, that the team doesn’t engage in the kind of self-sabotage that perennially derails it, an issue that predates him but hasn’t yet been remotely solved by him.
“I put pressure on myself every day,” Bowles said when he received his New Year’s Reprieve, “and that’s part of it. It makes me a better coach and it makes me a better person.”
By all accounts, he is a good person. In three years, we have seen flashes and spasms that he can be a good coach. Across these next 16 games, starting Monday night at Ford Field, we’ll need to see more of that. It seems for certain the Jets have the quarterback who will lead them back to the light when they’re ready to get there. It’s less certain they have the coach who will join him there.