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I was going to tweet this, but I decided not to.
Most people wouldn’t have understood the reference anyway.
Plus I just had no desire to tweet today.
The tweet was, “If the Jets don’t tweak things on offense, there is going to be a continental divide in their locker room.”
The Jets offense is a mess right now.
The reference to “continental divide” is in relation to the fact that the Jets’ current offensive coordinator Jeremy Bates was out of coaching from the ages of 36-40, and spent part of that time hiking the Continental Divide by himself.
This hiatus from football was from 2013-16. He came back last year to be the Jets’ QB coach.
Look, he’s a very smart guy, but I just wonder when you are away from the sport for that long, do you rely on too must stuff from before you left?
Remember, Bates is a Mike Shanahan-disciple and runs a similar offense to his mentor.
But Mike Shanahan’s offense was cutting edge in late 1990’s when Denver won a couple of Super Bowls at the end of John Elway’s career.
I’m not saying all of Bates’ thinking is stuck in that era, but the league has changed so much in recent years with guys like Sean McVay and Matt Nagy now on the cutting-edge, doing so many funky things now.
I feel like watching the Jets offense now, it’s like a system from another era.
Remember, aside from being a Mike Shanahan-disciple and being away from the game for a while, prior to his four years away, he was a QB coach in Chicago under Mike Tice in 2012. I have no idea what kind of offense Tice runs, but he didn’t last long as a coordinator in the league.
The last time Bates called plays before being hired to do so in 2018 by the Jets, was in 2010, in Pete Carroll’s first-year in Seattle. He was fired after just one year.
So we are talking about a coordinator who hadn’t called plays in the NFL for eight years before the Jets hired him to call plays for them in 2018, and on top of that, was out of the sport from 2013-16.
Quincy Enunwa said after the game he has a good idea what is wrong with the Jets’ offense, but won’t say, because he wants to keep his job.
I usually don’t get too much into second-guessing play-calling because of something Bill Parcells always said after games when writers did that.
“Don’t judge the decision by the result,” Parcells always said.
It’s a very fair point because we know the result when we rip a play call.
But the play-calling in the Jets loss to Tennessee just didn’t pass the smell test. Something was amiss.
Hey, maybe Josh McCown was a little off – remember he missed a lot of practice this week finger and back issues.
I’m not calling for anybody to be fired, but I will say one thing.
Bates should be forced to go into the booth. This calling plays from the sideline, without a good view of the full field (like you get from the booth) is a mistake, in my opinion.
The bottom line is, whatever happens with the Jets after this season, they better tweak their play-calling approach down the stretch.
Let’s not forget their prized rookie QB is coming back this week.
You don’t want to mess him up with dubious play-calling, perhaps some of it from a by-one era.
December 2, 2018
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