Adam Gase's Message to the New York Jets: 'We Don't Have a Choice, We Have to Get Better'
It isn’t a must-win game for the New York Jets but Week 2 of the NFL season is shaping up to be a statement game for a team that looked lost on Sunday.
The 27-17 loss in their season opener at the Buffalo Bills was a game made closer by a late Jets touchdown score. There were also two inexplicable fumbles in the first half by Bills quarterback Josh Allen, each of which came on drives when Buffalo looked destined to get points.
For Adam Gase, the Jets head coach, it was a disappointing game. This season opener was supposed to be an extension of last year’s close to the year when the Jets won six of their final eight games to finish 7-9.
Instead, the loss felt like one of the debacles from the first half of last season when the Jets started 1-7 in a comedy of errors and injuries. Now the Week 2 opponent, the San Francisco 49ers, are not exactly an ideal team for a bounceback.
“I look at it as, we don’t have a choice, we have to get better, we have to improve, we have to make sure that we do a better job next week because we are playing another team that’s really good on offense and they are really good on defense and really good on special teams, so we cannot play like we did this last game,” Gase said.
“We have to correct a lot of things very quickly, we have to get a lot better really fast and we got to go put the work in, we have to make sure that we study correctly, we got to make sure that our game plans are tight and that we have answers for our players and basically we got to go back and work and we just got to make sure that we do a good job of making these practices count.”
Buffalo, favored to take the AFC East this year, is one thing.
Sunday’s opponent, the 49ers, are a whole other challenge. The 49ers, after all, made the Super Bowl last year.
It is a bridge too far to think the Jets are going to come out and beat a team that was just a handful of minutes away from winning the Super Bowl last year. But to be competitive and look more like a professional team on the field is certainly not too much to ask.
The Jets were just 4-of-11 on third downs and had nine penalties for 95 yards. It was a sloppy showing from the Jets on both sides of the ball, one that Gase said on Sunday was a lack of complimentary football.
“I don’t know if it was so much mental mistakes, it was we weren’t making plays, I think it’s details, whether it’s on offense, details of some of the route concepts,” Gase said.
“Defensively and special teams, a lot of our issues came with missed tackles. We just got to keep working on our fundamentals and making sure that when we do our drill work with tackling and ball security that we make sure that we are really wired in when we do that. We also have to do a good job of wrapping up, getting to the ball at practice and just do a better job this week than we did last week.”
