Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

sluggermatt15 wrote: Sure, signing FAs will help, but IMO the team needs a few to several franchise players. Who is the answer at QB? Hackenberg and Petty are very young and unproven. Could they be the stars? Matt Forte is a decent RB, but the defense is a mess. I think there is much work to do, a few big name FAs will help, but to me it's more of talent panning out for NY to turn into a playoff team. What do you think?

Petty is definitely not the answer. Hackenberg is not likely the answer either. It would be surprising if Forte was brought back. The defense is not a mess. I did make comments on most of the defenders in an earlier post. Williams, Jenkins, Adams, and Maye are good young players. McClendon is a good older player. Those guys represent five of the 11 starting spots. If Davis comes back, he would make it six good starters. Lee is a question mark. The Jets will most likely have at least one new starter at cornerback.

By the way, if anyone wants thoughts on the Jets from Jets fans, do not venture onto any Jets-specific message boards. I went to look at one yesterday morning to see what the latest hot takes were regarding Kirk Cousins and I couldn't last more than a few minutes. There are many Jets fans who are angry about the team going 5-11. They think the team ruined their future by not going 2-14. They think only Josh Rosen and Sam Darnold can be good and the Jets will obviously not be in position to draft either one now {I am not sure they will both be drafted before the Jets are up}. I also saw numerous people suggest the Jets should trade Jamal Adams and the 6th pick to move up to the 1st pick. I even saw a couple people suggest the Jets can trade Adams, Williams, and the 6th pick to Cleveland.

The topper was when I read posts from multiple people writing about how the Jets should tank in 2018 to hopefully land the top pick in the 2019 draft.

It was an absolute cesspool.

JWL wrote:By the way, if anyone wants thoughts on the Jets from Jets fans, do not venture onto any Jets-specific message boards. I went to look at one yesterday morning to see what the latest hot takes were regarding Kirk Cousins and I couldn't last more than a few minutes. There are many Jets fans who are angry about the team going 5-11. They think the team ruined their future by not going 2-14. They think only Josh Rosen and Sam Darnold can be good and the Jets will obviously not be in position to draft either one now {I am not sure they will both be drafted before the Jets are up}. I also saw numerous people suggest the Jets should trade Jamal Adams and the 6th pick to move up to the 1st pick. I even saw a couple people suggest the Jets can trade Adams, Williams, and the 6th pick to Cleveland.

The topper was when I read posts from multiple people writing about how the Jets should tank in 2018 to hopefully land the top pick in the 2019 draft.

It was an absolute cesspool.

The franchise drives people to madness

I do think both Darnold and Rosen are gone before 6. But I am bullish on Mayfield. He just has "it" in my eyes. I don't know what his ceiling is but he's not going to be Manziel. He's gutsy, makes plays...has growing up to do but I just love his passion. And a good arm. Makes all the throws.

Our D is fine in terms of talent and will be better this year once the draft and free agency period concludes, Jets will be very active players in it. Trouble is Bowles just can't coach anybody up, and he's a poor playcaller.

sheajets wrote:The franchise drives people to madness

I do think both Darnold and Rosen are gone before 6. But I am bullish on Mayfield. He just has "it" in my eyes. I don't know what his ceiling is but he's not going to be Manziel. He's gutsy, makes plays...has growing up to do but I just love his passion. And a good arm. Makes all the throws.

Our D is fine in terms of talent and will be better this year once the draft and free agency period concludes, Jets will be very active players in it. Trouble is Bowles just can't coach anybody up, and he's a poor playcaller.

Nobody knows what any of these guys will be in the NFL. Lamar Jackson could be good too. Ditto Mason Rudolph. Even Mike White looked alright in the Senior Bowl. I just find it weird that people have decided only Darnold and Rosen will be good.

As for Bowles, I didn't defend him after the 2016 season. I did after the 2017 season. Fine. He gets another year. At some point, maybe in 2018, it will be about results. Whether he can't coach anybody up (again, a subjective thing hard to prove one way or the other) or he is a poor play caller (not sure he has called plays with the Jets) will be something nobody will ever be able to prove. His W-L-T record will determine how long he will coach the Jets barring him quitting for whatever reason. We shall see how much rope he gets if the team stinks again in 2018.

JWL wrote:

sheajets wrote:The franchise drives people to madness

I do think both Darnold and Rosen are gone before 6. But I am bullish on Mayfield. He just has "it" in my eyes. I don't know what his ceiling is but he's not going to be Manziel. He's gutsy, makes plays...has growing up to do but I just love his passion. And a good arm. Makes all the throws.

Our D is fine in terms of talent and will be better this year once the draft and free agency period concludes, Jets will be very active players in it. Trouble is Bowles just can't coach anybody up, and he's a poor playcaller.

Nobody knows what any of these guys will be in the NFL. Lamar Jackson could be good too. Ditto Mason Rudolph. Even Mike White looked alright in the Senior Bowl. I just find it weird that people have decided only Darnold and Rosen will be good.

As for Bowles, I didn't defend him after the 2016 season. I did after the 2017 season. Fine. He gets another year. At some point, maybe in 2018, it will be about results. Whether he can't coach anybody up (again, a subjective thing hard to prove one way or the other) or he is a poor play caller (not sure he has called plays with the Jets) will be something nobody will ever be able to prove. His W-L-T record will determine how long he will coach the Jets barring him quitting for whatever reason. We shall see how much rope he gets if the team stinks again in 2018.

2018 would be the end of the line for Bowles. It doesn't have to be playoffs but the proper foundation/culture has to be set. Consistent efforts given and better gameday preparation. I don't mean to throw out a bunch of buzzwords but overall the team has to improve as the season goes on and have a few moments where it looks like it's arrived. Beat Brady in Foxboro or come back from a big deficit to win.

If not I believe the Jets have a guy waiting in the wings who they are very high on (Jeremy Bates) who I think they'd be eager to give the job to

Defending Bowles is becoming a chore now. The team came off extra rest and played unprepared, made little to no adjustments, and the patented weirdo 4th quarter field goal and weirdo 4th quarter punt reared their ugly heads again.

Bowles is beleaguered. He doesn't appear to be intelligent enough to coach a team. Situational football is just far beyond his grasp. He regularly punts or kicks field goals and leaves games 3 score margins when he needs to be going for it in attempts to narrow it to two. His right hand man Kacy Rodgers is equally clueless. He's supposed to be a secondary specialist and his secondary is regularly torched. Our secondary is talented but regularly underperforms.

Discipline and preparedness issues that plagued him in year 1 continue to plague him

Once the Jets fire him he will never be a head coach again. 11-26 in his past 37

Bates has been a surprise disappointment. Last year they fired the only guy on the staff who did a nice job (John Morton) because of philosophical differences with Bowles. Well it looks like they fired the wrong guy.

JWL wrote:Defending Bowles is becoming a chore now. The team came off extra rest and played unprepared, made little to no adjustments, and the patented weirdo 4th quarter field goal and weirdo 4th quarter punt reared their ugly heads again.

Not sure they'd fire him in season but if we drop both to Indy and Denver then why not. Give Kevin Greene or Rick Dennison the job and see what they can do. At 1-5 Bowles would be a goner anyway and the season would be over

JWL wrote:and the patented weirdo 4th quarter field goal and weirdo 4th quarter punt reared their ugly heads again.

Was going to message you when that happened, this thread got brought back to life instead but 'classic'.

Reaser wrote:

JWL wrote:and the patented weirdo 4th quarter field goal and weirdo 4th quarter punt reared their ugly heads again.

Was going to message you when that happened, this thread got brought back to life instead but 'classic'.

There was another one last Sunday in Chicago. It is getting harder and harder to defend Bowles. I'm just about spent.

I made a Jets rant in an e-mail this morning. Might as well share it here.



Sam Darnold seemed lost with both Bilal Powell and Quincy Enunwa not in action. The coaching didn't help either. That was the most vanilla the offense was all season. The Jets cut the score to 17-10 in the 4th quarter and then the defense had their worst drive of the game to let the Bears go up 24-10. Was the defense spent at that point? It is possible.

I "loved" Todd Bowles calling for a punt with five and a half minutes to go with the Jets trailing 24-10. There was actually one local radio guy, Chris Carlin, who defended the punt. Maggie Gray thought it was alright too. Carlin thought that by punting, the Jets could stop the Bears and then get the ball right back, score a touchdown, and then convert an onside kick, and score another touchdown in 4 minutes--- I guess.

I think Bowles knew the game was over at the five and a half minute mark and just wanted the game over as soon as possible. I ridiculed this sort of punt in the past. In the prior two seasons, Bowles could have been saying, "Okay, fellows. You don't want to try to win today, so we shall punt and end this game quicker. This will be a lesson for you. If you want to keep the score close in future games, then I'll coach 60 minutes."


I can't stand it!


Bowles doing this in 2016 with Ryan Fitzpatrick and doing it in 2017 with Josh McCown is one thing and that was bad enough. Doing it this year with a young quarterback is simply wrong to me. The idea should be to mold Darnold and never let him think a game is out of reach within reason (down by two scores with five and a half minutes left is "within reason" to me; trailing 45-3 with 5:30 left is something entirely different).

So what if Darnold throws an interception that gets returned for a touchdown. Losing 31-10 is not much worse than losing 24-10.

At some point, Bowles has to try to win every game I would think. Why not at least occasionally try to come back?

There was no way that the Jets would have ever come back to win by punting when they punted short of the Bears muffing the punt. Even if the Jets stopped the Bears on a 3-and-out, you are talking about 3:30-4:00 to go OR a little bit more time on the clock but no timeouts left (I do not recall the Jets timeout situation at that point). There was no way they were going to score 14 in the last 4 minutes after they scored 10 in the first 56 minutes. Plain and simple, the punt was an act of surrender.