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You need to take these kinds of comments with a grain of salt. You must.
To me, it’s just common sense to take these kinds of comments with a grain of salt.
I’m talking about asking player or coaches, who used to work with somebody, for public comments on what they think of a team hiring that individual.
Do you expect the person being questioned to rip the hire?
Let me start with Mike Shanahan praising the Jets hiring of Jeremy Bates as offensive coordinator. Bates worked for Shanahan in Denver from 2006-2008.
“He’s an extremely bright guy,” Shanahan told the Daily News. That’s one of the reasons why he called plays. I knew he could handle it. When you’re around coaches, you know who has the ability to call plays and who doesn’t. And it doesn’t take you long to figure it out… especially when you’ve called plays your whole life. Which people understand defenses? Which people understand the running game? Which people understand how the running game and play action are put together? Which people understand third downs?”
That is all fine. Bates is extremely bright, but do you think Shanahan is going to say anything bad about Bates to a newspaper writer?
I find it really interesting that articles like this, and others, aren’t delving into why Bates was out of the league for four years in his 30’s, prime years in a coaching career.
This is the elephant in the room, and a lot of people are ignoring the elephant. It’s hard to ignore an elephant.
Kirk Cousins was in WFAN on Tuesday from the Super Bowl Radio Row. He was asked about Bates. Remember Cousins was drafted by Mike Shanahan in Washington.
“They are great football minds and I’ve been very fortunate to have one good coach after the other,” Cousins said. “Jeremy Bates does come for that coaching tree, if you will.”
Cousins met Bates in 2012.
“I liked him then,” Bates said. “He talked about football and that’s what matters to him. It was a smart hire by the Jets.”
What is Cousins going to say on WFAN, “It was dumb hire by the Jets.”
Look, I’m not being a jerk about this, just keeping it real. People get all excited about flowery quotes from people after their favorite team hires a coach.
I always see this in college sports. When a coach is hired in college, they always compile a bunch of quotes from people associated with him. Go back and look at some of those quotes after the coach was fired.
99 percent of the time you aren’t going to get a frank, blunt quote from former associates of somebody was just hired by a team. It’s very, very rare.
That is why I can’t get too caught up in these kinds of stories.
But I will leave you today with an honest quote about the Jets hiring Bates.
The quote is from me.
I think it’s a great hire if he has his act together. Bates clearly had some issues that led him to take four years off from football. Hey a lot of us have issues. It’s part of the human experience. So to me, if Bates is able to control what ever was troubling him in the past, he should do a great job for the Jets. But if the piano wire snaps, the Jets could have problems. The Jets are gambling on greatness.
January 30, 2018
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