Gang confident Sam will overcome Pats horror
Sam Darnold had his toenail removed. His memory of a nightmare performance remains. But that memory is not necessarily all bad news for live-andlearn Jets coach Adam Gase, who will not tell his quarterback to burn the tape after a 33-0 loss to the Patriots on “Monday Night Football”. “I have a lot of confidence in Sam bouncing back from this,” Gase said Tuesday. “It’s tough when you go through this originally. Then you go back and watch the tape, figure out your mistakes, move on to the next game, put a good game on tape. That’s really what we have to do.
strong game Sunday against the Jaguars is the only way for Darnold to move on from the embarrassment, which included ESPN broadcasting a sideline conversation during which he admitted to coaches to “seeing ghosts” against the Patriots zero-blitz (no safeties) defense. The Jets are livid the mic’d up segment aired.
“The fact that it did just gives us pause to really cooperate anymore,” Gase said. “I don’t know how we can allow our franchise quarterback to be put out there like that.” Darnold committed five turnovers, including four interceptions, and finished with 86 passing yards and a 3.2 quarterback rating. But he wasn’t the only culprit: The offensive line missed blocks, the defense didn’t make a key third-down stop and receivers dropped passes in open space.
It was the kind of game worth forgetting for fans, not coaches and quarterbacks.
Gase even admitted he debated pulling Darnold — journeyman backup quarterback David Fales has thrown 48 career passes since entering the league in 2014 — as the mistakes mounted.
“I just kept thinking that we would get a drive going and build off that,” Gase said afterward. “It just never happened.”
The consideration is not an indication of lost confidence, however. One week ago, Darnold was named
AFC Offensive Player of the Week after lighting up the Cowboys in his return from a three-game absence due to mono.
The Patriots play more varied secondary coverages than the Cowboys, so what was available one time against one look might not be the same a short time later. The defense is on pace to be one of the single-season best in NFL history.
Playing behind a patchwork offensive line, Darnold never found a rhythm and frankly looked intimidated by the pass rush as he threw jump balls off his back foot in the red zone. Three of his interceptions were against blitzes.
“I do think we were prepared,” Gase said. “We just didn’t do a good job. What they did wasn’t different than what they had shown on tape, what ”they did against us the first timeA [the teams played].
“They brought everyone on their pressures. They show it to you. They don’t disguise it. They say, ‘Here, we are coming. Good luck blocking it, good luck setting it up right.’ Once we mis-executed the first one, it opened the floodgates up.”
Darnold finished the game with a wrapped toe after he was stepped on and limped back to the sideline. He later had the toenail removed.
“We should be OK there,” Gase said. Well, that’s a start. For the Jets to be OK elsewhere, Darnold needs to find the consistency that has eluded him most of his first two NFL seasons. He has experience bouncing back from hard times because he played well in three of the final four games as a rookie, but the momentum hasn’t carried over, in part because of his unpredictable illness.
“One week I play well and I feel like I’m seeing the field great,” Darnold said after the game, “and then I come back this week and the opposite happens.”
He’s a microcosm of the Jets right now. Not unusual: As the quarterback goes, so goes the team.
“It’s a game where it’s very painful and frustrating to go through,” Gase said. “You have to take as much as you can as you can as far as learn from the mistakes made, learn from the experience and put yourself in position to where that doesn’t happen again.”