USA TODAY International Edition
How Darnold bounces back up will be defining
Le’Veon Bell walked over to Sam Darnold’s locker in the silence of the disappointed Jets’ locker room.
The 22- year- old quarterback had just endured his worst professional start: a 33- 0, nationally televised evisceration at the hands of the Patriots on Monday night. Bell wanted to offer some words of encouragement to Darnold.
“Hey bro, there’s always been games like that where you don’t play well,” Bell recounted telling Darnold. “And now you know: You only can play better now. You can’t play no worse than you played tonight.” It sounds harsh, but it’s true. Everything went wrong for Darnold, from the career- high five turnovers to his mic’d- up “I’m seeing ghosts” comment being broadcast to millions.
Less than 48 hours after that debacle, the Jets returned to practice Wednesday to get ready for the game Sunday against the Jaguars. For the Jets, there is no bigger priority than making sure Darnold puts this stinker behind him.
“What happened last week is irrelevant,” Jets coach Adam Gase said. “You have to learn from it, but, I mean, it’s gone. There’s nothing we can do about it now.”
When the story of Darnold’s career is written, Monday night’s game against the Patriots will be a part of it. It was the first time he looked truly flustered and overwhelmed as a professional.
But his career will not be defined by that game, just like his rookie year wasn’t defined by the pick- six on the first throw of Darnold’s career.
It’s about what comes next. If Darnold can bounce back Sunday and continue to show progress over the final nine games of the season after that, no one will dwell on the night he was “seeing ghosts.”
Gase said Darnold has already done a good job of moving past the Patriots game.
“I see a guy that’s focused on this week,” Gase said. “I don’t see a guy that’s thinking about the last game. He’s dialed into what we’re doing right now.”
We won’t know where Darnold’s head is at until Sunday afternoon when he steps onto the field against the Jaguars.
How does he react when they blitz for the first time? What if the offensive line starts missing blitz- pickups like it did several times against the Patriots? Does the game start moving too fast for him? Do his mechanics break down again?
Does he get flustered and make more bad decisions? Or does he bounce back, the way he did after that pick- six in Detroit?
Bell has played with a future Hall of Famer in Ben Roethlisberger. He knows what it looks like and what it takes to be a champion quarterback.
So it was flattering when Bell spent his first six months gushing about Darnold’s potential to be a great quarterback.
And it was telling Monday night that Bell did not look shaken in the least after watching Darnold’s impassion up close.
“I think he’ll learn a lot from that,” Bell said. “Sometimes you’ve got to have that. As a young player, I had games like that. And it made me better. So hopefully that’s like a step for him to get better.
“He’ll go watch the film, and when you go and play against teams like the Patriots, they’re like really the best at what they do, defensive wise, so he’s going to learn from that and he’s going to be a better player.”