The New York Jets’ first offensive play of the game against the Indianapolis Colts featured a busted Adam Gase play design.
At this point, no one person can be blamed for the New York Jets’ current predicament—as much as so many fans would love to scapegoat a sole individual. Naturally, one name has certainly earned the bulk of the blame, simply due to his organizational status. (It’s just the way football works.)
Now 0-3 with a plethora of injuries and a supposed franchise quarterback floundering in a David Carr-like fashion, Adam Gase remains public enemy No. 1 in New Jersey and Long Island (among other New York/New Jersey metropolitan areas). And he deserves that blame no matter how unfortunate the situation or talentless the roster.
At this point, Gase is wary of opening up an internet browser. Outside noise is counterproductive in his mind.
“It’s something, I can’t focus on that,” Gase said Tuesday in response to his job being on the line. “It’s wasted energy for me. It’s not going to help me at all. All I can do is make sure I get our guys in the right headspace to go out there on Thursday and play well. And it started last night with our meetings going over: here’s how we’re going to play this game, here’s who is available to us, go do our walkthrough, do the same thing today.”
It’s certainly a good thing for his own sanity if he stayed away from the world’s wealth of sports information over the last 48 hours.
The Jets’ horrendous 36-7 loss to the Indianapolis Colts featured another double-digit defeat and the second-straight contest in which the offense did some decent things early in the game, but once again couldn’t put it all together.
Sam Darnold was horrid, again. His performance in this one resembled the team’s opening-week loss in Buffalo. Gase’s game plan may have been fine—much better than the conservative San Francisco strategy—but the overall design lacked creativity and new-school feel.
It started with play No. 1.
Good idea. Get Darnold outside the pocket and on the run where he likes it. And yes, Darnold likes rolling to his left much more than to his right. Considering his open stance when throwing the ball, throwing on-the-run to the right is a natural thing for him (see the Braxton Berrios touchdown against the Niners).
So, Gase dials up a play-action that gets Darnold outside of the pocket to the left with the right guard leading the way:
Darnold picks up two yards on the scramble (which was a constant all game long). Two yards on the play wasn’t the problem. Instead, the entire design didn’t leave a lot of room for success, as you’re about to see.
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