For New York Jets Head Coach Adam Gase, 2020 Is a Nightmare for His Offense & Sam Darnold

They may have a quick turnaround ahead of Thursday night’s game at the Denver Broncos but for the New York Jets, there is one more day to dwell and ruminate over a bad Week 3 loss.

Sunday’s 36-7 loss at the Indianapolis Colts sinks the Jets to 0-3 on the year for what has been a dismal 2020 in what is head coach Adam Gase’s second season with the team.

“This is the NFL. We’re 0-3 right now, we haven’t played well. We have to improve quickly. My job is to do everything I can to get our guys in the right head space heading into [Thursday],” Gase said on Monday in his conference call with the media.

“It’s frustrating because I felt like we started out doing some good stuff early in the game, we couldn’t sustain it. We did some things that shot ourselves in our foot where now the game gets out of control. We had to play that game a certain way, we had to make sure that we did a good job when we got our opportunities scoring in the red zone. We didn’t finish things the right way and next thing you know, we have no chance in the game. For me, I have to do a great job that I keep our players in the right head space because when a lot of negativity is coming at you and things are hard, that’s when everybody’s character has to show up, we have to go to work and get things fixed.”

Perhaps most frustrating is the development – or lack thereof – for quarterback Sam Darnold.

This was supposed to be the year for Darnold to take the next step. He closed out 2019 on a high, both in terms of results but also his own personal play.

After a 1-7 start in 2019 where he missed two games due to mononucleosis, Darnold and the Jets rebounded to take six of their final eight games. During that span to close out the year he had 13 touchdowns and just four interceptions.

It was heralded as a turning point for Darnold and a sign of his potential. That has certainly not carried forth into this season. The Jets are near the bottom of the league in nearly every offensive category of note.

And Darnold is coming off a Week 3 performance where he had three interceptions, two of which were returned for touchdowns.

All offseason, the talking point out of the Jets facility was how Darnold had shown further maturity. So far through the limited sample size of three games, no progress is evident.

Now, at the end of the day, it is hard to truly gauge Darnold’s growth or even to accurately assess Gase given their current conditions.

On Sunday for example, the Jets top three wide receivers were out injured. Darnold’s All-Pro running back is on Injured Reserve. Two starting offensive linemen were injured and held out. A third offensive lineman, left tackle Mekhi Becton, hurt his shoulder in the game and was taken out.

Hard for there to be true, bona fide development playing with what is a glorified XFL roster. And yet Darnold shoulders the blame for Sunday’s loss because of those three turnovers.

“To a certain extent, when you turn the ball over and me having two pick sixes – having any interceptions is unacceptable. So, to that extent, yes,” Darnold said on Monday in a conference call with the media.

“But for me, I’m really looking forward to just continuing to get back to work with these guys. We have a really good group, a resilient group. Like I said, the first few games of the season haven’t gone necessarily the way that we envisioned, but we’re looking forward to getting back at it and this quick turnaround. We’re looking forward to having a really good game against Denver, and looking to get a win.”