Hopefully, Mo learned his lesson. We'll see if anyone else does that or something similar. We're still waiting on Bowles to call out or punish Revis, Mo and others for dogging it on the field last year. I guess that's OK with Bowles too.
But see thats the thing, he did punish Mo and Sheldon for being late and who knows what was said behind closed doors. Revis, and Fitzpatrick he totally fucked up those situations no doubt. Fitz even being back here is a whole nother story, but Fitz should've been benched after the KC game. That's why I am on the wait and see approach
Yes, he punished them, but again, that was only after multiple incidences of being late and totally skipping a pre-game walkthrough. If he had punished after the second time he was late, the later occurrences and the skipped walkthrough probably would never have happened.
Compare Bowles stance on being late to a coach like Coughlin who considered you late if you were on time because in his organization 5 minutes early is on time. Personally I prefer the Coughlin method.
There are maybe a half dozen coaches in the NFL right now that have the credibility to be an effective disciplinarian with star players and half of them won't do that anyway because it is a risky approach. Belichik, Coughlin (didn't work so well in the last job), Andy Reid, maybe Mike McCarthy, that's kind of the list at this point. Add Mike Tomlin if you want but Big Ben has been running that show for the last few years. Really it's a one man list in New England at this point. Expecting Bowles to do what almost none of his peers can do effectively in the goldfish bowl of the NY media environment is kind of insane.
I am NOT sold on Bowles. Seeing last year and all. It's one thing to have a bad season. It's another to have a bad season because the entire team quit 5 weeks into the season, and subsequently the defense quit consistently, after the first quarter in our remaining games. This is a major concern.
Yeah it takes a special kind of credibility. Even Tomlin, you have to question if he really has control of all of his players after the stunt Antonio Brown pulled with the social media during the locker room speech.
I don't buy that for one minute. If you're right that HCs can't discipline star players and the players are running teams, then it's time for the NFL to shut down for good.
Maybe the Jets players are just all stupid. According to today's Star Ledger, Bowles never lost the locker room last season. Evidently, the players all like him, think he's a real leader, and trust that he will find a way to fix things. There were no answers as to why the players were almost always unprepared for games, gave little effort, etc.
This is a natural extension of the salary explosion of the last decade. You can't fire somebody for being a lackluster employee when they have a lot of guaranteed money. You can fire them for violations of the CBA, but those are 90% based on criminal and substance abuse violations. When the Jets gave Mo Wilk $50M guaranteed when he was already missing/late for meetings now and then they took the disciplinary tools right out of Todd Bowles hands. Period. Try cutting him for missing a few meetings. Good luck with that. Try getting your money back. Good luck with that. All Bowles could do was sit him when the problems became too big too work around.
He should've sat him after the first warning, and every time after that. True you can't fire/cut him, but you don't have to play him. Of course it's very possible that Woody drove that train since it seems out of character from Bowles rep as a disciplinarian prior to the Jets. But that's not the only knock on him.
It absolutely killed the Jets last year that the natural leaders on the team, Darrelle Revis, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Brandon Marshall and Mo Wilkerson let the team down all year long on the field and off. They all had up years in 2015 and for whatever reasons they all declined in 2016. Then you had killer injuries to people like Eric Decker and Nick Mangold that further depleted the accountable leadership structure. It was a perfect storm of suck and it would have gotten many a coach fired outright. If it had happened in Bowles 4th year he'd have been a goner. Maybe even his 3rd.
It really depends on who drove the big contract. Bowles should have put the hammer down right away to establish the tone for his coaching reign but if he was not the guy who paid the big deal, well that's a shot at whoever did, especially if he has to keep doing it over and over again. I'm all for make Mo earn his way on the field this year and cut him at the end of it if he hasn't done that. I'd rather we got the comp pick or traded him two years ago but there's no wayback machine on that.
No, but you can embarrass their asses by benching them and excoriating them in the media. You can also suspend and fine the crap out of them. With many of these players, money is what speaks anyway, so you hit them where it hurts, in the pocketbook. Unless the CBA took suspending and fining players out of the teams' hands (and if so, the owners are fools for ever agreeing to that), then that should be an option that the Jets have with Mo or any other player who dogs it, is late, gets in trouble off the field, or causes problems/headaches for the team. Isn't there the option for fining players for conduct detrimental to the team?
I get that, but what about players being unprepared to play? How can they not fault Bowles for that? That's one of the main aspects of his job is to make sure that his team is ready to play each and every week. How can they just accept or excuse that? Do they have no pride? Were they not embarrassed to go out there week in and week out and look stupid and awful? Surely they also know when to call time outs and how to manage the clock, and have ideas for adjustments. How can they excuse Bowles sucking at all those things? IMO something is missing here. It just doesn't add up. The players liking Bowles, yet the team looking awful most of the time last year is incongruous, unless the players are just drawing a paycheck and don't care anything about winning. We're not getting the full story or the whole truth.
