Whether the Jets like it or not, it impacts the narrative.

Talking about Manish Mehta of the Daily News, how his stories continue to impact the Jets’ zeitgeist.

Why am I bringing him today?

I often “Google” the New York Jets on the internet just to see if I missed anything, an article of note, a player move and so forth.

And the last few days, this one story keeps coming up:

Headline: “Adam Gase will continue to hold New York Jets back despite talented core.”

It was an article written by a gentleman named Brett Sobleski of Bleacher Report. I’m not familiar with his work.

A few paragraphs into the opinion piece, Sobleski wrote, “Despite what some have publicly said, Gase’s preferences and personality created a rift within the organization. The team’s stars are chief among the detractors.”

The premise above was based on Mehta writing recently:

“Players don’t respect Gase, who has rubbed them the wrong way with his inability to lead and lack of support,” Mehta reported June 24.

So the writer wrote it as fact that, “The team’s stars are chief among the detractors.”

What team’s stars?

Remember, this Mehta story claimed that Jamal Adams wants to be traded because he doesn’t like Gase.

As we have pointed out before, if this was one of the chief reasons Adams wanted out, why did it take until late June for this to come out, when the contract dispute has been a thing for several months.

But let’s say there is some truth to Adams not liking Gase. Now I didn’t see any evidence of that last last year, but let’s play along for a minute.

Okay, that is one player. The article from Mehta, made it seem like a lot more widespread than a player or two. I have to be honest, whatever you think of Gase, I got no sense of a brewing mutiny last year.

Neither did Jets left guard Alex Lewis.

“Give up your sources. You don’t speak for the locker room or myself. You got no place in the locker room if you are going to overgeneralize all players. Manish you are a poison to this team,” Lewis wrote on social media.

But the problem is whether I think it’s false, or Alex Lewis thinks it’s false, it’s all over the world wide web, and Bleacher Report, a widely read site, ran with it.

And this is very common with the Daily News writers scoops, which are often damaging to the Jets. Now not many Jets beat writers reference his stories, but there are a ton of fan websites, that come up when you “Google” the team, that do.

By the way, what did Gase think of that Daily News story? I’m not sure many of you saw this quote because it didn’t get a lot of play.

But the day after the story blaming Gase for Adams discontent, a Daily News reporter, Charles McDonald, asked Gase about Mehta’s story on a conference call. Mehta wasn’t on this call. It was McDonald instead.

“My relationship with Jamal has been good since the time I’ve gotten here,” Gase said. “We’ve had a lot of discussions throughout the season, trying to figure out ways to win.  We’ve always gotten along well. There has been a lot of dialogue between us about on- and off-the-field topics.”

But when it comes to Jets topics in the media, Mehta creates a lot of them for various and sundry websites, and this causes a narrative problem for the Jets at times.

And this is a big problem.

July 14, 2020

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