NFL Open Thread: In fact it’s a Gase

Monday night’s Jets/Pats game was a coaching mismatch of the highest order:

Chief among those problems was Gase’s inability to scheme up anything to counter what the Patriots were doing—even when it was obvious…

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Blitzes happen, though. Teams don’t do it with such abandon because there are any number of ways for offenses to beat them, from screens to pick plays to route combinations that include checkdowns. And then there’s play action, which play-callers around the league are using more and more to get defenses to hesitate, or to get linebackers in the middle of the field to take a step or two forward. According to Pro Football Focus, nine QBs used play action on at least 35 percent of their dropbacks in Week 7. Yet Darnold, with all that pressure coming from all those extra pass rushers, used a play fake on just five of his 33 dropbacks, or 15.2 percent.

Yet even as the Patriots consistently harassed Darnold, pressuring him on a whopping 16 of his 33 dropbacks, per PFF, Darnold was consistently placed in situations that called for him to hold the ball. According to the NFL’s Next Gen Stats, Darnold’s average intended air yards was 12.5. In his two other starts this season, against the Cowboys and Bills, Darnold’s IAY were 8.6 and 5.6, respectively. This was his passing chart last night. Notice that just 10 of his 32 attempts were thrown within five yards of the line of scrimmage. Also notice that seven of them were complete, which means he was 4-for-22 on any throws beyond five yards

And while Gase has Darnold’s injury as an excuse for the year as a whole, as Cosentino observes the Jags, Steelers and Panthers have been able to build much more competitive offenses around QBs with draft pedigrees no better than Luke Falk’s. But that’s because Marrone/ DeFilippo, Tomlin/Fitchner and Rivera/Norv didn’t just give up when their #1 options went down, and actually tried to construct an offense that tries to move the ball around what they had. And even if one assumes arguendo that Falk has less ability than Minshew or Hodges or Allen, it still hangs on Gase, since he brought him with him from Miami.

And none of this is surprising; Gase had thin credentials before coming to Miami and did a terrible job there. He basically milked a second job out of 1)the afterglow of being on the sideline for Peyton Manning’s 13th season of great performance; 2)getting plaudits for Jay Cutler having a completely typical Jay Culter year for reasons I’ve never understood; and 3)having a run of luck in close games that made his bad Dolphins teams (18th, 27th, and 27th in DVOA) look mediocre. And don’t think there will be a third.

And the Jets are somehow even worse off the field than they are on it!

The Jets are their usual dispiriting mess on the field, but in the executive suites their leaders sound testosterone-infused, insisting that their players manifest the manly virtues of playing through pain.

Of late the Jets confronted the challenge posed by Kelechi Osemele, a 6-foot-5, 300-plus-pound offensive lineman who has the accumulated scars of an eight-year-long N.F.L. life. He’s had sprained and twisted toes, knees and ankles, and his back can creak like an old wooden door. Sometime in the past year, perhaps in August and perhaps earlier, he tore the labrum in his right shoulder. A magnetic resonance imaging exam, he said, showed the muscle had torn clear off the shoulder bone.

The Jets shrugged. Be a manly man, they told this two-time Pro Bowl selection. He took Toradol, a brand name version of the painkiller ketorolac, and it was suggested that he consider a cortisone shot or two. As cortisone is known to weaken cartilage and mask pain, doctors often recommend against it. Osemele passed.

On Friday, Osemele ignored the Jets’ advice and had surgery. On Saturday, the Jets doubled down on their foolishness and released him.

It’s bad enough that they give the Pats two byes a year, they’re somehow considerably less likable.