Adam Gase is on the firing line now. It can get away from you quickly in this town, in this social media age, and so now he is coaching for his job.
He has not lost his team yet, but it has taken him all of eight games to lose his fan base.
And, oh, by the way, Le’Veon Bell (knee) was sent for an MRI exam on Monday morning.
Alarm bells are ringing, red flags have been raised in all precincts, as the angry mob rages that it has been sold a bill of goods.
There has been absolutely no evidence that Adam Gase will be their Sean McVay. That was a pipe dream. Only Peyton Manning’s Sean McVay.
Gase presided over what should forever be remembered as The Fish Tank, and there is no excuse for such an epic fail. None. Not the need for a better offensive line and an elite pass rusher and a cornerback. Not the loss of C.J. Mosley. Not the dramas of Kelechi Osemele and Jamal Adams.
It isn’t enough that his players work hard and practice well. They are paid to win. Gase is paid to win. To find a way to win.
These next three gameday hours on Sunday will be the most important of his career.
His immediate mandate: Beat the Giants in front of your fans at MetLife Stadium.
Or else.
His second-half mandate: Put an end to Sam Darnold’s troubling regression, and make sure Jets fans leave the stadium on Sunday feeling better about him than Giants fans do about Daniel Jones.
Or else.
Beat the Giants to prevent your locker room from fracturing.
Or else.
At the first hint of trouble, he will hear the “Fire Gase” chants that erupted at Hard Rock Bottom Stadium towards the end of The Fish Tank.
He better change the narrative, and change it before it gets late early for Christopher Johnson.
Even if Johnson will have to be paying three coaches.
Even if Gase was given the authority to handpick Joe Douglas as his GM.
“Always, when we lose a game, I feel like I let him down and haven’t got us to where I was hoping we’d be at at this point,” Gase said.
So the job-security questions reared their ugly head after only eight lousy games.
“It’s just something I don’t really focus on,” Gase said. “All I can focus on is we’ll be better for having to go through this, it’s extremely tough, we’re gonna see how tight we are as a group — coaches, players, support staff, everybody in the building. We gotta battle through this, we gotta figure out a way to dig ourselves and go find a way to win a game.”
Asked if Johnson has relayed anything to him to indicate he is safe for 2020, Gase said: “I’ve never asked him that directly.”
So much was made about the fact that Gase, following three years coaching the Dolphins, was not another in the long line of assistant coaches ascending to the Jets head coach job.
And so much was made about the fact that Gase was the first offensive-minded head coach hired by the Jets since … cough, cough … Rich Kotite.
Gase was the quarterback whisperer who would do for Darnold what McVay did for Jared Goff, what Andy Reid has done for Patrick Mahomes, what Bill O’Brien has done for Deshaun Watson, what John Harbaugh is doing for Lamar Jackson.
Gase’s whispers have fallen on deaf ears, and he better pump up the volume and pump it up now, because Darnold is the crown jewel, that long-lost young franchise quarterback who signals hope for the army of long-suffering Jets fans who have been waiting what feels like an eternity for one.
“I think I can go through reads a little bit faster,” Darnold said. “It sucks to say now that we’re 1-7, but we’re right there. We just gotta lean up some things, we’ll be OK.”
Darnold contracting mononucleosis was clearly a setback, but it was Gase’s job to make sure it was not the kiss of death. “It’s hard for me to say that he’s taken any steps back, it’s just that we gotta get some of these plays cleaned up,” Gase said.
Feeding Bell — but not from the Miami 2-yard line — after neglecting him in Jacksonville and getting Darnold some sprint-out options didn’t exactly inspire tanking from the Dolphins defense.
The results of the Jets’ games against their AFC East foes: blowing a 16-0 Opening Day lead and losing 17-16 to the Bills at home; the 33-0 Ghost Game against the Patriots at home; the ignominious 26-18 Fish Tank.
There is nowhere to go but up for Gase. The burden of proof is on him now to show that he won’t be another Jets head coach who has fallen but can’t get up.
Beat the Giants. Or else.
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