I'm going to sort of hold out on this, because if he does indeed roll with Petty, than Mehta's whole article is garbage. I'm going to defend Bowles here a bit. I love his demeanor and his ability to stay tight lipped and keep himself out of the spotlight. Off the field, I love his anti-Rex persona. I want him to succeed. If Bowles is coaching for his job, and he thinks there is even a chance he loses the players motivation by switching quarterbacks than he cannot do it. If he puts in basically a rookie QB, and some of the veteran players lose their motivation, they could easily go 3-13. Now as fans, I think that is what we've been waiting for. A legitimate shot to get a franchise QB early in the draft (or another superstar quality player). Maybe an offensive version of Leonard Williams. But from a coaching point of view, he would be signing over his job. No coach in the NFL would do that. Hell, no working person would sacrifice the immediate, for the long term, if it means losing his/her job. Everyone needs to be on the same page. Bowles/Macagagnan need to know their jobs are safe for next year. Once they know that, they can start to build towards the future. But you cant ask a coach to play for next year, if he is going to lose his job if he loses too much.
The only sentence I can agree with is your first. I wanted Bowles to succeed as well. I LOVED him at first, but detest him now. He is a clueless, incompetent, pussy. THAT's why he stays tight lipped. He has nothing to say, no answers, and is afraid. The very idea of a HC being afraid of how his players would react to his decision should be anathema to you. NO HC worth a damn is going to act out of fear of how his players will react. Rather, he does what he believes is best and right for the team or for his career. If the players react negatively and quit on him, then he never really had their trust and respect to begin with. IMO Bowles has done nothing to merit keeping his job next season. He has proven himself to be incompetent beyond any shadow of a doubt. In a normal situation where the HC reports to the GM, then yes, Mac could either tell Bowles to play Petty and not worry about next year, or tell him that he was gone following this season regagardless, or tell him nothing and just order him to play Petty. The problem is that this isn't a normal situation. Woody set it up so that Bowles and Mac are equals with both reporting to Woody. Woody knows nothing. Mac and Bowles are set up in an adversarial position. It's a no-win situation for anyone.
A lot of this just seems like opinion with nothing backing it. Let me ask you one question, and we can leave it at that: If you were Todd Bowles, and your Jets career is tied to this current season. Would you start Petty or Fitz, knowing that starting Petty could drastically decrease your chances of keeping your job.
I would start Petty. To begin with, if I were Bowles, I'd know what a crappy job I had done as HC and know that I didn't deserve to be back next season. I'd know that I was in over my head. Second, I think the Jets have a better chance of winning with Petty IF they let him play. He has a better, stronger, more accurate arm than Fitz. He won't limit the offense in the way Fitz does, opponents don't have much film on him, and opponents shouldn't be able to stack the box for long like they do with Fitz. We know what Fitz is and isn't. He can't make all the throws. He decides before the snap where he's going with the ball and still throws it there even if the receiver is double or triple covered. He isn't inspiring or leading the offense. More often than not, he wilts under pressure. We don't know what we have in Petty. There is NO reason to continue to start Fitz. He doesn't increase the chances of winning, he won't be here next year, and at this point winning hurts more than it helps. The Jets need talent and youth. The better their draft position, the better their chances for making a quick turnaround.
So you are essentially going to hand yourself your own pink slip? Remember you need to look at this as the coach of the team and not a fan, taking the report into account. Fans have the benefit of looking towards the future. If this report is true (which I doubt), the team is ready to give up if the Jets move to Petty. Like I said, I dont think this is the case at all, but this is the premise I am going off of. None of your post addresses the issue at hand. I agree that Petty is the better option for the team, for today, tomorrow, and next year. I pretty much agree with your entire post, as I have wrote basically the same thing in other threads. However, what it comes down to is: If Bowles starts Petty, he loses the locker room (allegedly). If Bowles loses the locker room, the team will play worse. If the team continues to struggle, he could get fired. Bowles has no choice but to start Fitz in that scenario. Unless Woody steps in and reassures him that evaluating the young players and sacrificing wins doesnt affect the future of his job, I wont blame him for starting Fitz. It reminds me of the Rex/Idzik year a little bit. Idzik came in to clean everything up and rebuild the roster. Shave the dead weight and accumulate draft picks. Rex was in win now mode, and coaching for his job. They were not on the same page and it was absurdly obvious. Jets were left no choice but to fire them both. Now having said all that, I dont buy this article at all, and I think Petty will be the starter going forward. Rendering this entire thread/conversation pointless.
I think the article is bullshit. But if it's true, Bowles needs to start Petty and tell the players if they give up, they're getting benched or cut.
Thats a badass move, but do you think the players believe he has that kind of power. I certainly dont.
He certainly has the power to bench players. And it isn't really that badass a move. If you play on a team at any level, you give your best effort regardless of whether you agree with the coach's decision. On my college team, if I dogged it during competition, I would get dropped from the lineup regardless of whether I'm better than my replacement.
Sorry, I meant cutting them would be badass. We already know Bowles is willing to bench. Hopefully he rolls with Petty and the team gets on board. Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk
I don't think he's "stupid"...I do think he's in over his head. He won't be the last guy that struggles in the head coach position. He really hasn't been able to impart a sense of leadership or vision...at least from what I see. I'd be wonder if the Jets (and the fans & the media) give him the opportunity much longer.
If he is scared that the players might revolt for replacing a loser like Fitzpatrick he should go this week. You cannot be a successful NFL coach but picking your buddies as coordinators. Since we cannot get a new owner we need Woody to bite the bullet right now. Mike Mc. also needs to be put on notice for his horrible drafts. We need to find the next John Schneider and the guy is either Scott Fitterer or Trent Kirchner who currently are his right hand guys.
Are Fitterer or Kirchner responsible for any of Seattle's success? For that matter, remember what happened the last time we took one of Schneider's guys?
I understand what you're saying and could understand why Bowles might keep starting Fitz, but then I think that's a loser mentality. I've seen coaches do it before and still get fired. Has doing that ever really saved anyone's job? Is 5-11 really that much better than 3-13? I disagree that my post didn't address the issue at hand. IMO the issue IS that Fitz sucks. For all his years of experience, he has never learned how to read Ds, his decision making has never improved, and he has crap for an arm. Look at his historical record against teams with better Defenses. Look at his history of choking under pressure. Look at the fact that he's never led a team into the playoffs. At this point, I truly believe that almost any QB in the NFL would give the Jets a better chance of winning that Fitz would. If the Jets' players can't see that, then I'd pretty much be for shit-canning the whole lot. To answer your question specifically, yes, I would start Petty even if in all likelihood I might be handing myself my own pink slip. I'll tell you this...if I were the HC of any team and was in over my head as much as Bowles is and had done as sorry a job as he has done, they wouldn't have to fire me. I'd quit, or at least offer to. I have more integrity than to take someone else's money, and not do my job. Also, taking the long term view with the team isn't just the province of the GM, or at least it shouldn't be. The HC should be on board and equally involved in that. Everyone that has watched the NFL for any time at all knows that when your team is out of competition for the playoffs and is in a time of transition (re-tooling/rebuilding), it's time to play the youngsters to see who can help the team going forward and to try to speed their development. I can tell you that if I was the GM or owner of an NFL team and I was looking to hire a new HC that I'd never hire one that did only what was best for himself in a situation like this. I'd never hire a Bowles type that kept playing a QB like Fitz instead of playing and developing a young QB who could be their QB of the future. I would consider hiring one who accepted reality, didn't think only of himself, and did the right things for his team even if it cost him his job. If I were Mac or Woody, and Bowles came to me and said with the injuries the team has, the way the team has played this year (in large part due to my failings as a HC), and that the chances of making the playoffs were nil, and he was planning on going with the youngsters to speed their development and see who could help the team going forward, I would respect that. It would show courage, integrity, the ability to put the team over himself, and I'd probably be willing or even inclined to give him another year to get things straightened out. If my HC admitted that he was "afraid" to do the right thing because it might cause him to lose the locker room, and thus his job, it would definitely cost him his job, and I wouldn't wait until the end of the season. I'd fire his ass the same day, or the next for certain. In terms of starting Fitz because I was afraid I'd lose the locker room if I didn't? Hell no I wouldn't start Fitz. I'd flat out tell those dumb bastards in the locker room that I was the HC, and that I made the decisions of what was best for the team not them. I'd tell them that if they quit or dogged it, I'd bench and fine their asses, that most likely their career with the Jets would be over, and that if it came to that, I'd do my damnedest to see that they never played in the NFL again. If they quit, so what? Most of them haven't played worth a damn all year, so I don't see how their play could get any worse. A number of them appear to have been dogging it anyway. I think the big problem with that is that Bowles hasn't held players accountable. He let Mo and Richardson be late or not show up for meetings. He let Fitz play like absolute dog shit early in the season and didn't bench him. I think he has already lost the team's respect. I don't see how he could possibly have it. The team shows up flat and unprepared to play most weeks, his game plans suck, in game adjustments are all but non-existent, his clock and game management still sucks. What has he done well to win/earn their respect? I'm glad that we agree in general. We all saw how it didn't work with Idzik and Rex, and yet somehow, Woody didn't. He created the exact same situation by making Bowles and Mac equals.
Maybe you're right about his not being stupid, but he sure seems to be. He's had no answers this season, and the gall (if not stupidity) to follow a HC who was fired in large part because he didn't discipline the players and hold them accountable, and be even softer and weaker. He's not a leader, doesn't seem to have a vision, hasn't learned from his mistakes, is stubborn, has regressed, and can't even manage something as simple as timeouts and the game clock. If that isn't stupid, then I don't know what is.
Yeah...he sure doesn't look good in his 2nd year. How many more seasons are they willing to give him. There's been plenty of head coaches that have been average to horrid their first few years on the job. Some look shitty later on in their career. A big concern is our inability to develop talent when we have it...it seems endemic to this team no matter who's running things. My Jets...yuck.
If our players would do that it is just proof that players do not know jack. this is not a country club for good old boys. This is a business that should be focused on building a winner.
Those that initially supported Bowles had good reason, he came from a winning program in Arizona, was viewed similarly to Rex with his defenses on the field (except for the stupid Rex Jaihouse blitzes on 3rd and 25) but was anti-Rex in personality. He seemed calm, serene and intelligent. Fast forward and he's no Rex as a DC, its questionable who on the team he motivates so he's no Herm in that regard, and his quiet demeaner is simply looking to me like the old adage... if you're not that smart and people are questioning your ability as HC why open your mouth and remove all doubt. The guy has shown ZERO growth as a HC forgetting results or lack of on the field. He makes the same mistakes over and over and over. Even C students seem like A students eventually if given the same test 16x a year. Bowles has earned the dunce cap and a plane ticket out of town.
