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New Jersey – If I’m the Terry and Kim Pegula I’m a little nervous right now. What did they sign up for? Time will tell, but some of the early signs have to be a little troubling.
If you just hired a new head coach, and it comes out shortly after the hire, that the team he had lorded over previously, had accountability issues.
“Guys just weren’t accountable last year as much as they could be,” said Jace Amaro. “I think that’s the biggest thing, [Todd Bowles] is making sure everyone’s gonna be 100 percent in or he’s not going to be on the team.”
Powerful stuff. We keep running the quote because it sheds so much light on what was going on before Bowles arrival.
Imagine if you are the Pegula’s, sitting around your house in Boca Raton, and saying, “Honey, what do you think of our new coach not holding players accountable with the Jets?”
I’d be really uneasy if I were the Pegula’s. I really would. They just gave him a five-year, $27.5 million contract.
But then again, I would have hired Frank Reich or kept Doug Marrone (by extending the contracts of his assistant coaches).
But perhaps the Pegula’s got sucked in by the cult of personality.
And aside from the revelations that Ryan didn’t hold players accountable, he’s also spouted off to Sports Illustrated this week about what happened with the Jets, three months after the Bills hired him.
If I’d just hired a new coach, I’d like him to focus 100 percent of his time and energy on my team, not where he was fired.
If I’m the Pegula’s, I’m thinking, “Move on from the Jets, man, our off-season program is in full swing.’
“They were trying to pull away from me,” Ryan told SI earlier this week. “Like it was my fault, somehow, that people identified the Jets with me, and that was a bad thing and not a good thing. I was just being who I was. From that point on I knew I wasn’t going to be long for that job.”
To me, that is just psychobabble that makes very little sense, and is tin foil hat material.
That didn’t go on.
The guy didn’t win enough (in part because he didn’t hold his players and coaches accountable enough), that is why he was fired.
The Jets need a coach who isn’t going to chase as many windmills as Ryan.
And Bowles seems like a good fit.
“I’m a football coach. I coach football. I don’t coach the New York media. At the end of the day, it’s about wins and losses,” Bowles said.
Good perspective. Do what you gotta do with the media for 15-20 minutes a day (in training camp and during the season), and don’t think about the media once you leave the press room.
What is the point so cooperating with Sports Illustrated on a blow-out feature on what happened with the Jets, three months after he joined the Bills?
There is none.
Perhaps he cooperated with the writer because two of his top assistants are good friends with her.
Like I said, there is no good reason.
April 16, 2015
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