Gase claims he wasn’t calling plays
Adam Gase insisted that nothing changed on Sunday, that he still wasn’t calling the plays.
But it certainly seemed different than the last four games when offensive coordinator Dowell Loggains was the one calling plays, and the Jets’ head coach even contradicted himself at one point in his postgame press conference on Zoom.
Loggains didn’t even have a play sheet on the sideline, and when Gase was called on it, he admitted to calling the plays on third down.
“He tells me [the plays]. It’s not hard. This is not hard,” Gase said after the Jets fell to 0-11, dropping a one-sided 20-3 contest to the Dolphins at MetLife Stadium. “We go through it the drive before. ‘Hey, these are the three plays.’ I do the third downs.”
Yet, at the beginning of the press conference, Gase said: “I didn’t take over, we’ve done the same thing the last four games.”
When told that in the third quarter, Loggains was seen talking to offensive line coach Frank Pollack during a drive, Gase had to be reminded what part of the game that was.
“When we got down, I was trying to do some of the twominute stuff,” he said.
Before the game, ESPN’s Chris Mortensen reported that Gase would take back play-calling duties with starting quarterback Sam Darnold back after missing the last two games due to a shoulder injury. Whether he called every play, or it was Gase and Loggains working in tandem, it had a poor result, as the Jets failed to score a touchdown for the second time this year against the Dolphins.
When Gase initially gave up his play-calling duties, he did so to try to jump-start the offense and see if others calling plays might help. The Jets did score 55 points the previous two weeks with Joe Flacco under center, but with Darnold back, and Gase appearing to at least be partially involved in what plays were run, the league’s lowest-scoring offense reverted back to its anemic ways.