KEEPING IT TOGETHER
Giants must take page from Jet's book and play as team
AHUMILIATING home loss. Followed by a game across the country against the 49ers. A coaching job to be saved. No, this isn’t the Giants and Ben McAdoo’s mess. This was Todd Bowles and the Jets’ 3-9 mess last season after that embarrassing 41-10 loss to the Colts on Monday Night Football on Dec. 5.
The following Sunday, Bowles’ Jets went across the country and beat the 49ers, 23-17. They won two of their final four games. After losing their first two games of the 2017 season, the Jets have won four of the past seven and appear headed in the right direction.
Compared to the 1-7 Giants, the Jets are a winning machine.
One thing is certain, the Jets are together as a team, and that is the first change the Giants must make if they want to get things right.
What did Bowles do to make sure his Jets stayed together?
“He made us look at ourselves in the mirror,’’ defensive tackle Steve McLendon told The Post on Friday after practice. “He treated us like men. We grew from that as a team. Staying together is what it’s all about, regardless of circumstances or situations.’’
The Jets insist this is just the start and the winning must continue Sunday at Raymond James Stadium against the 2-6 Buccaneers.
That is the next phase. Sure, the season has been a pleasant surprise, but the Jets want more. In their locker room, five words are plastered on the ceiling in Jets green: Discipline. Accountability. Toughness. Teamwork. Determination.
All coaches, all teams have such words. Those words have to be lived.
“The fact we didn’t play well and a lot of guys have pride on this team and they came back the next week to play,’’ Bowles said of that 2016 loss to the Colts and the subsequent victory against the 49ers. The path we’re on this year started in the spring, it didn’t start last year, probably from a chemistry standpoint because we have a lot of new guys and those guys are getting to know each other and just working hard and playing together.”
When Bowles was asked what he had to do to make sure his message got delivered, he said: “You can’t just preach it, you have to teach it. We have coaches on the staff, including myself, that teach it every day. We have a leadership council that we do and we work on it every day. We’ve been working on it for a long time.’’ The Jets aren’t worried about the Giants. They have enough to worry about trying to win a game against the stumbling Bucs. But there is a football lesson here and it is as old as the game. A team has to be together before it can even consider itself a winner.
The leadership council appears to be a game-changer for Bowles and the Jets. Tight end Austin Seferian- Jenkins explained.
“The leadership councils, a lot of different stuff in the offseason that brought us together as a team, you are ownership of what we put on the field,’’ he said. “You are ownership of what our record is, everyone has a say, everyone has a role, and everyone is an important cog on our team. No one is more important than anyone else and we all respect each other.’’
The Jets are not kidding themselves.
“We’ve had a little bit of success,’’ Seferian-Jenkins said. “We definitely want more and we will get more if we keep working.’’
The beauty in all this is the self-policing role.
“That’s a huge thing,’’ Seferian-Jenkins said. “That’s what good teams have. They self-police each other. We’re doing a better job at it and we can continue to get better at that and that will help us win more games. We’re taking care of ownership. We’re enjoying the moment. We’re enjoying playing, we’re enjoying practicing. We’re enjoying beating [the preseason predictions]. We don’t think about anybody else. We only have four wins, there are seven more games left, we need to win as many as we can, if not all of them.’’
That is your turnaround mindset.