Professional Football Researchers Association Forum
PFRA is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the history of professional football. Formed in 1979, PFRA members include many of the game's foremost historians and writers.
Todd Bowles is one of the most incompetent humans I've ever seen stand on an NFL sideline.
I believe this with absolute sincerity, that some of the decisions I've witnessed him make and just the general level of of total disharmony decay that he has presided over from locker room dysfunction to penalties to an inability to game plan and make adjustments or to even put a team out there that's cohesive and gives any sort of effort
It is a legitimate question to ask if Todd Bowles may be coaching with CTE from his playing days.
The Jets are 14-35 since week 16 of 2015. Bowles has never learned from any mistakes he's made. I have no other way to explain this. Bowles vapid empty glares from the sidelines. This is not a stern focused look. This is a confused man who is decaying.
I would just conclude that he sucks as a head coach and not try to speculate on any possible medical problems.
Looking back on his Jets tenure, I don't know what were his strengths. People say he is classy. Maybe that is it. He didn't publicly blame others for the team's awful record.
As for his weaknesses? They have been documented in this thread. There is no need to go over them again other than to say what happened yesterday was a microcosm of his tenure.
Trumaine Johnson, who I think has the most sizable contract on the team, was late for a meeting on Wednesday and was suspended for the game yesterday. This almost certainly means he was late other times. Bowles didn't read him the riot act earlier and tell him this is not acceptable and that Johnson is supposed to be a team leader?
He was replaced by Rashard Robinson. Robinson has appeared to look lost whenever he has played from scrimmage. He again looked lost on Sunday. It appears Robinson will have a career as a special teams player who should only be used from scrimmage in emergencies.
Derrick Jones, who looked good in preseason but had been inactive almost the entire season due to being caught in a numbers game, started on the other side as a replacement for the injured Mo Claiborne. I was not watching this game with an eagle eye like I normally would but it seemed to be typical in that one CB played on one side of the field and the other on the other side. It is a tad easier for a right-handed QB to throw to his right. Tom Brady was attacking Robinson much more than Jones. Couldn't Bowles see this? Why not switch Jones and Robinson to the opposite sides? Why not bench Robinson and let Parry Nickerson play? (Nickerson was seen on the field more in the second half, but, again, I wasn't as zoned in as normal).
You could look up the exact particulars in the game book or watch the game, but classic Bowles moments occurred at the end of each half.
The Patriots were up 21-3 with a minute to go in the first half. It was 4th down. The Jets had three timeouts remaining. The Patriots were just outside of field goal range. They chose to run a play to try to convert for a first down. The Jets stopped them. The Jets got the ball back and maybe needed 30 yards to get into field goal range. The Jets ran one play and that was that.
Huh? Wait a minute. Come again? Didn't you say the Patriots had a 4th down with a minute to go and the Jets had three time outs remaining? Maybe my ears are clogged. Say that again, please.
Well, you see, Bowles saw no reason to use any time outs. The clock was running between 3rd and 4th down when the Patriots had the ball. The Jets got the ball with a half minute left. There was still time to throw a few passes and get into field goal range. But, no. It appears Bowles was okay being down 21-3 and he didn't want to risk a turnover. It was determined that it was better to play for something like a 5-TD loss than a 6-TD loss than it was to maybe try to, I don't know, see if you can score before the half and then do something good in the second half.
At the end of the game, the Patriots scored a touchdown to go up 38-3. The clock showed 3:26 remaining if I recall right. The Jets ensuing drive ended in a punt.
Why? Why?!!? Why not try to score a touchdown in New England for the first time in three years?!!?
The Patriots then went vanilla on offense and punted it back to the Jets. The same thing the Patriots did would have occurred had the Jets gone for it on 4th down and failed. The Patriots just would have done it further up the field. So then it happened. The final offensive play from the Todd Bowles Jets era was a nice run that ended in a fumble recovered by the opposing team.