Gase Closed: New York Jets Head Coach Optimistic Because His Team Practices Well

Winless through five games, the New York Jets aren’t very good. In fact, they haven’t been competitive in any game since Week 1.

And even their season opener wasn’t all that close, truth be told.

The Jets lost to the Arizona Cardinals 30-10 in Week 5, dropping their record to 0-5 on the year. This wasn’t supposed to be a huge leap forward type of year, but the Jets, after supposedly continuing their rebuild this offseason, were supposed to be better than this.

Instead, last year’s 7-9 record seems a distant memory. Now, head coach Adam Gase is starting to run out of excuses for why his team got blown off the field again but other teams around the league at least manage to look competitive.

“I mean, when you’re 0-5, I’m watching these guys put the amount of time and effort and try to do more and try to get things fixed,” Gase said after the game.

“We get to 17-10 and end up losing the game. It’s frustrating for all of those guys in there. We have to come back to work tomorrow. We have to pull together, watch the film, and learn from it. We have to go out and have a good week of practice and adjust how things are…try to find a way to win a game.”

Winning a game seems like a far cry for the Jets right now. This is a team that might get run off the field by an SEC program at this point.

Four out of five times this year, the Jets have lost by double-digit points. All told, it has been an 87 combined point differential through five games this year.

On offense, the Jets had just 285 yards and conceded 496 yards and 28 first downs in Week 5. They’ve been sloppy, with six personal foul penalties in Week 4. They’ve found every which way to lose.

Gase, almost blind to what is happening on the field, points to practice as the reason for optimism. Practice, he says is reason to believe.

Practice, which doesn’t count in the standings, is the reason to hang in there.

“If you watch these guys practice and how they go through the week and the effort and how these guys are trying to get all of this stuff right and figure out a way to correct the mistakes that are made,” Gase said.

“If you were there day in and day out and saw how those guys practiced last week, you wouldn’t know what our record was. Wednesday and Thursday, those guys came out max effort. They were flying around. They competed. The execution was really good. Not practicing Friday kind of took the wind out of our sails a little bit, but I thought they did a good job on Saturday when they came in and we extended the day and tried to make up for all of that stuff, through walk throughs and going through the practice the day before. I guess it’s just what I see at practice. The result just don’t match up.”

And yet, that would be an indictment. If practice is so outstanding, then either he doesn’t have the personnel to be competitive or he’s a terrible game day coach.

While it is true that the Jets have substandard talent, other teams around the league are battering injuries and in the midst of their own rebuild. And yet, the Jets are the only team getting blown out on a weekly basis.

Those five games, more than being world beaters in practice, should be the focus of Gase.