❚ Coaching changes,
The Jets are looking for a new coach. Again.
The team fired coach Todd Bowles on Dec. 30, finishing the season at 4-12. The team delivered the news upon returning to New Jersey after a 38-3 loss to the Patriots.
In a statement, the Jets said general manager Mike Maccagnan will keep his job and “work closely” with CEO Christopher Johnson to select a coach.
Bowles failed to make the playoffs in any of his four seasons with the team, finishing with a 24-40 record. After starting 10-5 in 2015, Bowles lost 21 of his final 27 games as Jets' coach.
Bowles and Rich Kotite are the only coaches in team history to preside over at least 32 games and fail to make the playoffs.
The Jets have now gone through 13 consecutive full-time coaches without reaching the Super Bowl. The Jets won their only title in the 1968 season.
Bowles' fate was sealed with a six-game losing streak that included a humiliating home blowout loss to the Bills and an epic collapse in Tennessee.
They squandered several winnable games over the course of the season, including onepossession home losses against Miami, Houston and Green Bay and one-possession road losses to the Browns, Dolphins and Titans. In four of those games, the Jets blew a fourth-quarter lead.
Jets fans embraced Bowles as he started 10-6, but it didn't take long for the honeymoon to end. Bowles' stoic sideline demeanor and lack of emotion didn't endear him to the fan base, and as the losses piled up, angry fans began calling for his job as early as 2016.
Bowles finally got his quarterback in Sam Darnold this season. But the early struggles of offensive coordinator Jeremy Bates — the former quarterback coach whom Bowles elevated after firing John Morton last year — and the overall ineptitude of the defense proved too much for Bowles to overcome.