Think back to when Adam Gase was first hired to be the head coach of the New York Jets. Remember the big selling point? It was that Gase, who had earned a reputation as a quarterback whisperer—just look at what he got out of Ryan Tannehill in Miami!—was going to take young Sam Darnold under his wing and turn him into the franchise quarterback the team so desperately needed. Nobody was even really counting on Gase to make the Jets a good team, only to make sure Darnold didn't turn into a bust.
All of that is very funny to think about in hindsight, not least because Tannehill has gone on to have even better seasons in Tennessee than he ever had in Miami. There's also the problem of the Jets being 7-20 during Gase's tenure, and the even worse problem of Darnold looking nothing like a competent NFL quarterback. In his third season as the starter, he's thrown three touchdowns and eight interceptions in seven games. Both his completion percentage (58.7) and yards per game (177.4) have regressed severely from where they were last season. Today Darnold is, somehow, a worse quarterback than when he entered the league as a rookie.
If Gase was truly interested in keeping his job, you might assume that he'd try to say anything to distract people from the fact that his team is currently 0-11 and that Darnold looks like crap. He could go out there and talk about how, yes, even though it's disappointing that the Jets are winless and Darnold hasn't thrown a touchdown since Week 3, he's still seen great strides in the young quarterback's feel for the game, and things might have gone much differently this season if Darnold hadn't been dealing with a shoulder injury all year. Instead of doing that, Gase told reporters yesterday that he's just straight-up failed at doing the one thing he was hired to do:
"I came here to help him, help him develop his career, and we haven't been able to do that," said Gase, who is 7-20 and has presided over the NFL's worst offense for the better part of two seasons.
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"We need to do things well around him, but at the same time, it's on me to get him to play better than what he's played," Gase said. "I haven't done a good enough job."
ESPN
Yes, yes, we're all screaming for Gase to be fired. He even wants it to happen, it seems. But have you considered how funny it would be for Gase to keep his job, see poor Sam Darnold shipped off the the Jaguars, and then get a chance to start fresh by mentoring Trevor Lawrence? It would be pretty funny.
