The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Coaches use shame to shore up penalty problems
FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — It has been a Jets training camp tradition of sorts in recent years.
After every penalty, the entire offending unit would drop to the ground and do pushups. And there were a lot of pushups, because there were a lot of penalties.
This year, under new coach Adam Gase, the pushups are gone. And through the first weekplus of practice, the penalties have been far less frequent.
So what’s changed? Well, at least on the defensive side of the ball, the Jets’ new coaching staff is using shame as a weapon.
If a player makes a mistake or commits a penalty in practice, they can be certain that it will come up later in the day, in front of the entire defense.
“In the back of the head, you’re always thinking, ‘let me be on top of my stuff so I don’t be the butt of the joke,’” linebacker C.J. Mosley told NorthJersey.com and USA TODAY Network Northeast.
It’s no secret that defensive coordinator Gregg Williams has a very direct coaching style. He holds his players to a high standard and will give them credit when they reach it. But if they don’t, they’re going to get called out. Every time.
“Coach does a good job of holding everybody accountable for our mistakes,” defensive lineman Henry Anderson said.
“And if you mess up, you’re going to hear about it in front of the defense. So I think that kind of pushes guys to not want to go out here (on the practice field) and screw their assignments up or commit penalties.”
The Jets take to the practice field early in the morning, and when mistakes are made they’re
usually pointed out right then. That’s the quick, relatively easy part.
But then comes the dread, because if a player makes a mistake, he knows that it’s going to be pointed out again, in detail, during the afternoon meeting.
Wednesday marked the first time that the Jets defense had several penalties during 11on11 drills. And Anderson, who was responsible for one of the mistakes, knew what was coming next.
“You never want to be up on the board being called out,” Anderson said. “I know I’ll be up on the board (later) for a couple different things, but tomorrow I’m going to try to be better and not show up again. So I know for me it’s effective, because I never like to get called out. I try to do my job and have the trust of my teammates to do what I’m supposed to
do. So I think that it’s effective for me and it’s effective for a lot of the other guys, too.”
It’s all part of the culture this new regime is trying to create. Of course, it doesn’t matter how clean the team is in practice during July and August. They’ll be judged on how they perform once the games actually matter.
But the idea is to set a higher standard and try to reach it.
“For us to be one of the top defenses in the league in all the categories, like we say: We first have to be the best conditioned, the most physical and the smartest in the whole league,” Mosley said. “And that starts with penalties. We’ve got to do our best not to have big plays and penalties.”