As this piece is being typed up on Monday afternoon, Adam Gase is still the head coach of the New York Jets — a remarkable situation considering just how horrible of a football team Gang Green truly has been under his watch.
After going 7-9 last season, the Jets are 0-6 to start 2020, their latest embarrassment coming in a 24-0 loss to the Miami Dolphins — the easiest team on their schedule — on Sunday afternoon.
It was the fifth time this year that the Jets lost by double digits, looking as lifeless and uninspired as ever for a coach that recently shipped one of its best offensive talents in former All-Pro running Le’Veon Bell out of town.
With the Jets’ latest showing of ineptitude, which has become all-too-familiar over the last five decades, it has the fan base fractured down the middle when it comes to the future of Gase.
They could fire him now, use the usual momentum that comes with such a shrewd move, and maybe win two or three games this season.
Or, they keep Gase, keep adding gallons of water to the already-sinking ship, snag the No. 1 overall pick of the 2021 NFL Draft that is given to the worst team in the league, and draft the highly-touted Clemson quarterback, Trevor Lawrence.
Then the Jets could fire Gase and magically institute a competent hierarchy of leadership that will transform the team from losers to respectability.
If the Jets do decide to go with Door No. 2, how in the world will things go according to that seamless plan? After all, this is the Jets, and everything they touch goes to that familiar gangrenous state.
The Jets’ culture under Gase is completely rotten through and through. Regardless of when you fire him, it is going to take years to scrub clean the remnants of just how bafflingly bad this team is.
Even if he’s shown the door, that doesn’t solve the little problem of the presence of owner Christopher Johnson, who so ridiculously labeled Gase as a “brilliant offensive mind” no more than a month ago.
Yes, the same guy that almost derailed the careers of Ryan Tannehill, Kenyan Drake, Robby Anderson, and Damien Williams — who are now thriving elsewhere — still had the 100% support of an owner who, frankly, might not understand what football is.
So what is going to suggest that the Jets — if and when they fire Gase — get the hiring of his successor right?
What suggests that if they draft Trevor Lawrence, that he’ll be submerged in the right kind of culture that would allow him to flourish at the professional level?
Nothing. That’s the right answer.
The Jets have continuously brought in the wrong people while highly-touted, franchise quarterbacks of the future have languished.
It happened with Mark Sanchez and it’s happening with Sam Darnold to the point where fans are already writing off the 2018 No. 3 pick.
If I’m Trevor Lawrence, I would consider staying an extra year at Clemson or pulling an Eli Manning and demanding a trade to avoid the utter dysfunction at the Meadowlands.
