Good read, enjoy... One weekend morning this spring, Sam Darnold was in a New York City hotel room after a night out with friends when his phone rang with a FaceTime call. It was Adam Gase. “I’m like, ‘What’s going on?’ I’m in the hotel. I’m in my boxers. I have my shirt off and I’m FaceTiming my head coach,” Darnold recalled with a smile. Gase quickly saw it was not a good time to chat and told Darnold to go take a shower. “If you see his name pop up and Adam Gase wants to FaceTime you, no matter what you’re doing you always feel comfortable answering and he’s not going to judge you,” Darnold said.The Jets’ second-year quarterback and first-year head coach have developed a strong relationship over their first eight months together. The franchise is counting on that relationship leading to more than just FaceTime hijinks, but to wins and eventually championships.That is the reason Gase was hired in January over the other candidates interviewed. The Jets felt he was the right coach to bring out the best in their young quarterback. The two have spent the spring and summer getting to know each other better and learning to speak the same language, even if that requires the occasional FaceTime surprise from the head coach.“I bug him a lot,” Gase said. “I FaceTime every once in a while and just drive him nuts.” The head coach-quarterback relationship is the most critical in sports and it is at the center of the 2019 Jets. A baseball manager and pitcher do not always need to be on the same page. In basketball, star players have more clout than coaches. In hockey, a goaltender and coach do not need to have great communication.But in football, it is essential. From Paul Brown and Otto Graham through Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, nearly every dynasty in NFL history has had a coach/ quarterback tandem leading the way. You look at a great quarterback, they usually have a great coach. You look at a great coach and they nearly always have a great quarterback. Since 1967, there have been 18 coaches inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Of those 18, only three of them did not have a Hall of Fame quarterback.In the current NFL, a group of second-year quarterbacks has recently had success in tandem with an offensive-minded head coach. The Rams (Jared Goff and Sean McVay), Bears (Mitch Trubisky and Matt Nagy) and Chiefs (Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid) all went to the playoffs in that quarterback’s second year. The Jets hope Gase can do the same with Darnold. That is why they made him their first head coach with an offensive background since Rich Kotite in 1996.“I don’t want to say it has to be a great relationship, but you have to have an understanding,” Hall of Fame coach Bill Parcells said.Parcells had one of the great coach/quarterback relationships in New York history. There are three that come to mind over the past 60 years — Parcells and Phil Simms with the 1980s Giants, Weeb Ewbank and Joe Namath in the 1960s and early 70s with the Jets and Tom Coughlin and Eli Manning in the 2000s with the Giants. All won at least one championship together. Parcells and Simms had a fiery relationship that both said was fueled by their competitive spirit.“Bill and I spoke the same language,” Simms, now a CBS analyst, said. “I know everybody says, ‘You two argued.’ We spoke the same language. We were the same guy. That’s why we got along. That’s why we could yell at each other.” Parcells agreed when relayed Simms’ comments. “He was a pretty fiery personality and so was I,” Parcells said. “But it was OK, we weren’t taking things personally and there were times when we could have but we didn’t.” Gase and Darnold are not at the point of yelling at each other on the field yet. They are still feeling each other out.At one point in OTAs this spring, Gase yelled at Darnold. The 22-year-old quarterback told him, “It’s about time.” “He’s always cracking jokes left and right,” Darnold said. “I’m still trying to figure out how much I can say to him. I don’t want to be like saying things that aren’t appropriate with him being the head coach and everything. It’s all fun and games until you make fun of the head coach.” The two are also trying to learn how to communicate about football together.“The other night he swings in and I kind of showed him how I watch film, how I go through game planning,” Gase said. “We talked though what’s the best way for you to do it. I think that’s going to be an ongoing process for him and myself because I don’t want to overload him and having him looking at all the stuff when he doesn’t need to. It’s one of those things where Year 2 is going to be different than Year 8 for him. We’ve just got to slowly keep building that library up.”Darnold said he and Gase process things similarly and that has helped him learn the offense. Gase texts him at night about the next day’s practice and the two seem to always be talking when they are on the field. Gase said he will involve Darnold in game-planning to make sure the quarterback feels comfortable with what they are doing. That is something Parcells did with the Jets when Vinny Testaverde was his quarterback in 1998.“Vinny did not like confrontation,” Parcells said. “I understood that. When we were doing something, all I wanted to do was make sure Vinny liked what was in the game plan. If he didn’t like certain things, we’d just throw them out. I would say, ‘Is everything here OK?’ As soon as he said, ‘OK, coach,’ well then he owned it. We were all calling the plays with the confidence that he liked them and we thought we could execute them.”Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Fouts said it will be different for Darnold to have a head coach who is invested in the offense and the quarterbacks room. Todd Bowles was a defensive coach and the de facto defensive coordinator for much of last year. “It’s huge,” Fouts said of that relationship. Don Coryell was hired to coach the Chargers midway through the 1978 season, Fouts’ sixth season in the league. The next year Fouts went to the first of six Pro Bowls and was All-Pro for the first time.“He gave me hope, a tremendous attack plan and a commitment,” Fouts, now a CBS analyst, said. “I tell a story about starting a game and missing my first three passes and my fourth one was picked off for a touchdown the other way. I come over to the sideline and instead of feeling like I’m going to get yanked, he says, ‘You’ve got 40 more throws, OK?’ It’s that commitment to the plan, to the offense and to me that was the reason we had success.” Beyond calling good plays, giving the quarterback that belief is where the best coaches make their marks, several former quarterbacks said.“Confidence is an unbelievable thing,” Simms said. “You can conquer all. A tight throw looks wide open all of a sudden. You’re a better decision-maker. You feel good. You lead better. When you eat at night, it goes down easier. All that’s real. The better he manages Sam Darnold, the better it’s going to be for the whole football team.”Gase famously worked with Peyton Manning, one of the greatest to ever line up, when he was with the Broncos. Gase said the biggest thing he learned from Manning was how to listen to players. He is now trying to forge a relationship with Darnold in which the quarterback can always have a direct line to him on anything.“Is it really important for Sam? [Expletive] yeah,” Gase said. “Think about it, he can come to me for anything. It might be the smallest thing that somebody else is griping about and he can be like, ‘Hey, we really need to get this fixed because this group is having a problem.’ He can solve problems. He can get to me where some guys might be a little afraid to say anything. He knows like, ‘We need to get this fixed.’ He wants to win. For him to do that, he needs to make sure that crew is good.” Darnold knows he can reach Gase at any time about anything, even if it is a Sunday morning FaceTime call in his boxers. https://nypost.com/2019/09/05/insid...e-relationship-that-jets-bet-their-future-on/
“I’m like, ‘What’s going on?’ I’m in the hotel. I’m in my boxers. I have my shirt off and I’m FaceTiming my head coach,” Darnold recalled with a smile. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
After that pervy opener I was expecting male prostitutes and crack. EDIT: Wait! I know what it reminds me of! That old JP Losman gem about Brett Favre! "He invited me into the house for a little bit," Losman said. "There he was with his tight little shorts, no shirt and his little red hat. He was doing some farming or something. He was covered in dirt. It was awesome."
Here ya go, Finnish... Behind the Scenes of how Sam Darnold eliminated tells and made specific changes to get to the next level By MANISH MEHTA NEW YORK DAILY NEWS | SEP 07, 2019 Sam Darnold challenges the adage without hesitation. He insists that he hasn’t entered football’s Matrix, where he views the world in slow motion. His truth is quite different than the convenient storyline. “People usually say, ‘Oh, the game’s slowing down for him. It’s slowing down in his second year,’” Darnold told the Daily News in a candid conversation about his continuing education in the run-up to the season opener against the Bills on Sunday. “For me, a better way of saying it is everything’s speeding up in my head.” He snaps his fingers, explaining one of the fundamental improvements that he believes he’s made this offseason: Moving off his first read quicker. There were too many times when Darnold felt paralyzed by his initial read in the progression last season. Maybe he threw an interception or incompletion. Maybe he got crunched by a pass rusher. Something needed to change. So, he spent the spring and summer absorbing Adam Gase’s offense, while making it a point of emphasis to know when to cut bait from his first option on a given play. The approach doesn’t always yield optimal results. Sometimes, the first read that he moved off breaks open a split second later for what would have been a big gain. It’s a reality that Darnold has accepted since this new approach better avoids negative plays. “I’m reading something No. 1 to No. 2 to No. 3 … in progression,” he says. “I’m just eliminating No. 1 faster. So, I’m playing faster. You got to trust it. There are times when I think, ‘No. 1’s not there. Go to No. 2.’ I hit No. 2 and it gains five yards. And then we look at the tape the day after and No. 1 was open. There are times when that happens, but for me, I just got to trust my instincts.” His instincts are part of his gifts. Darnold has the makeup, skillset and inherent feel to be a difference maker for a long time. He’s far from a finished product, but his desire to become that finished product is what makes his future so tantalizing. “He has a great chance to be one of the great quarterbacks in this league,” wide receiver Jamison Crowder told the News. ‘Oh, no! What are you doing?!’ Darnold made 48 improvements that you probably didn’t even notice this summer. There was progress in every one of his preseason snaps, subtle changes that will prove invaluable moving forward. He has worked diligently at eliminating two important tells from last season. Gase, who studied the details of every one of his new pupil’s pre-snap body movements upon getting hired, noticed that the quarterback was tipping the snap on shotgun plays by moving his elbows, while barking out cadence. Darnold’s fidgety elbows were an indicator that the ball was about to be snapped, prompting smart defensive linemen to get a good jump off the line. One defensive coordinator who faced Darnold last season confirmed to the News that he had indeed noticed the tell and passed it along to his players. So, Gase pointed Darnold to Peyton Manning and Ryan Tannehill’s tapes from the shotgun. Manning was the master of keeping his elbows still while only moving his hands. “It’s something that I never really did before,” Darnold said about keeping his elbows still. “Now that I’ve done it a few times, it’s getting better. There’s a lot of things that the normal fans wouldn’t notice. If you focus on those very minuscule things in practice, then you don’t have to think about it anymore in the game. I think that’s where we’re trying to get.” Darnold also had to correct his mechanics under center. Gase noticed that he only had one hand under center when stepping up to the line of scrimmage. Darnold would start barking out calls from this relatively lax position. In other words, the defense was never actually threatened since the quarterback wasn’t in position to take the snap with two hands under center. So, he needed to make this small — but important — adjustment this offseason. The 22-year-old has also been working on avoiding getting caught in what Gase refers to “No Man’s Land.” Darnold had a tendency last year to sprint to his right, stop and let it fly. One problem: That approach might get him snapped in half. So, Gase has underscored the importance of staying in motion when flushed out of the pocket to avoid a crushing hit from a defender coming from his left. (He’s also trying to get Darnold to roll out less to his left and throw across his body). [More Jets] Jets need at least nine wins for this season to be a success » “I remember in some type of drill when we were going up against the defense,” Darnold said. “I sprinted to my right in the red area, pulled up and tried to throw to my back side. You’re not supposed to do that because you got free guys coming from behind you. I knew I shouldn’t have done that right when I did that. Gase is like, ‘Oh no! What are you doing?!’” ‘SAM I AM IS THE MAN’ Darnold is smart enough to know the expectations entering his second season. He’s supposed to make a significant jump, right? After all, recent history suggests that talented young quarterbacks make tangible progress with one year of seasoning. Jared Goff, Carson Wentz and Mitchell Trubisky made real strides in Year 2. Goff’s completion percentage, touchdowns, touchdown-interception ratio, yards per pass attempt and passer rating skyrocketed in his second year. Wentz was a viable league MVP candidate through 13 games of his second season before he suffered a torn ACL. Trubisky made significant strides in every meaningful statistical category too. The hope is that Gase can have the same impact on Darnold as new coaches Sean McVay and Matt Nagy had on their second-year quarterbacks. “I’m really not making the game bigger than it has to be,” Darnold says of his expectations in 2019. “That’s kind of ironic, because that’s not really an expectation. But I think if I do that — if I don’t make the game bigger than it has to be, if I just do my job every single play, if I read my progressions — 1 to 2 to my check-down — then we win games. If I take care of the football and do a good job on third downs, we’re going to win a lot of football games. Ultimately, my expectations for the season is to win a lot of games.” Goff, Wentz and Trubisky each won 11 games in their second seasons. If Darnold could do that, hysteria would spread across an eternally frustrated fan base. Amid an offseason filled with change, Darnold has taken the proper steps to continue to grow into the player that so many believe he can become. He flew out teammates to Southern California during the month-long hiatus before training camp to get quality work in on the field and bonding time with teammates off it. “It was cool to see how nice his parents were, the people that raised him, the people he grew up with,” Quincy Enunwa said of the workouts at Darnold’s old high school. “In football, it’s good to like the people that you work with because it makes you want to work harder for them. When you recognize what that guy has done and who he is a person, it makes you respect him and play more for him.” Darnold has everything at his fingertips to make it happen for a star-crossed franchise. “Sam I Am is the man,” Pro Bowl safety Jamal Adams said. “He’s made some throws (this offseason) that caught a lot of our eyes, where’s like, ‘Whoa!’… He’s getting confident in the scheme. It’s his offense. He’s ready to go.” A special season might be on the horizon.
Proof that fluff stories mean nothing Gase should stop whispering and start teaching the QB Dear lord his offense looked very vanilla and had no adjustments that I could easily tell. WR got zero separation. Gotta adjust. Gase tricked the Johnsons.
Can we just stop?? If the kicker doesn’t leave 4 pts on the field, this whole forum has a different feel.
Jets have a lot more roster problems to solve than a shitty kicker. They had all summer to find a kicker and this is what they come up with a couple of days before the season starts. If they couldn't find themselves a decent kicker during an entire offseason, imagine the remainder of the positions which need help.
Surely not a terribly difficult thing to do, but yes, he certainly did. The quicker Chris realizes he's been duped by the offensive version of Rex Ryan, the better.
Did you think Gase did well? Nothing on offense after 4 turnovers Did Sam do well? Did the coaching staff adjust?
If we don’t leave 4 pts on the field none of those matter. Even with the shit performance across the board, this was the Jets’ game
Nope even if they’d have lucked out a win due to the defense and turnovers I’d still be appalled at Gases offensive play calling.
