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When Joe Douglas was introduced as Jets GM
in June of 2020, he said at his press conference: “The plan is to create the best culture in sports. Every great team has that culture.”
Perhaps, to a degree, this plan is on hold in 2019, and it’s not Joe’s fault.
It’s hard for a GM to build a strong football culture with a coach on the hot seat, especially a coach who doesn’t have a reputation as a cultural builder.
That isn’t meant to be a shot at Gase, but have you ever heard that he built a strong culture in Miami?
And one big part of building a strong football culture, is a strong bond between the head coach and his players.
“You have to be able to cultivate relationships,” said former NFL scout Daniel Jeremiah on NFL Network. “He has to be able to cast the vision – create the culture – and he has to be able to cultivate relationships. I don’t need somebody stuck in his corner office working on plays all day long.”
Jeremiah wasn’t necessarily talking about a particular coach, but perhaps he was. I no idea.
But Gase is clearly really into calling offensive plays. He recently told a network production meeting he loves calling plays, and would love to do it for many years to come.
However, sometimes you get the sense he’s too obsessed with his play sheet during the game, and perhaps doesn’t always take a 30,000 foot view as a head coach.
But if the Jets make a coaching change, it’s essential that the Jets hire a strong, proven culture builder, perhaps a college coach, and make sure he’s in lock step with Douglas from a culture standpoint.
Douglas has done a decent job running the personnel department, with the addition of players like Mekhi Becton and Denzel Mims in the draft, but the set-up now isn’t ideal for the GM “to create the best culture in sport.”
When it comes to football culture, the coach has to be a big part of building that, and Gase not having the best reputation as a culture builder, and the fact that he might be gone in five games, Douglas is probably going to have to pick up his culture plan once a new coach is in the building . . .
Jets left guard Alex Lewis (pictured above) continues to be held out of practice for a non-football matter. He was held out of the last game as well. There are rumors flying that he had an argument with Gase, and this led to the benching. He’s been a allowed in meetings this week, but not practice.
I’m not sure what exactly led to the benching, but one thing I was able to find out is that Lewis hasn’t necessarily been in the best mood the last few weeks – perhaps all the losing finally got to him. Remember, he came from a great program with the Baltimore Ravens. He’s also dealing with a painful shoulder injury, and obviously all the COVID-19 stuff has a lot of players/people on edge.
According to a source, he was yelling at teammates in practice last week for mistakes, and was told to knock it off.
Even before the benching, and whatever incident happened last week, the team was turning down media interview requests for him, due to his current state of mind.
December 3, 2020
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