Immediately after Sunday’s game against the Buffalo Bills, a 30-10 win against a division rival on the last day of the regular season, Jets’ head coach Todd Bowles was asked about the future of his coaching staff, specifically offensive coordinator Chan Gailey’s return.
“I’ll discuss all that as I get to our process next week,” answered Bowles, the sixth question into his postgame news conference.
The answer to the third question into Monday’s news conference regarding Gailey as next season’s offensive coordinator: “That’s something we have to meet with the coaches about. I haven’t met with the coaches yet to discuss it. So right now until we go through the process, everything’s as is. We’ll meet in the next couple days with everybody, and we’ll go over that as we see forward.”
A couple of days totaled one for Bowles. The process was expedient as five assistant coaches were let go Tuesday, as well as Gailey who is retiring. Their quarterback coach, Kevin Patullo, was one of the six let go, as was defensive line coach Pepper Johnson, who won two Super Bowls with the New York Giants and three as an assistant coach with the New England Patriots.
The Jets, who went from 10-6 under Bowles last season, his first as a head coach, were horrible this year, a disappointing, unproductive 5-11.
It was described by their receiver, Brandon Marshall, as “having a diaper on and never changing it.” Obviously a soiled diaper. “Just sitting in that diaper the whole year,” said Marshall during his weekly appearance on “Inside The NFL” aired on the Showtime cable network. “That’s how our year was. It was a bad year.”
Bowles and general manager Mike Maccagnan have both been retained for a third season, providing stability for a team that definitely needs it.
“You want that. You want your organization to be the same,” said defensive end Sheldon Richardson. “You don’t want to have to deal with learning new playbooks, and things of that nature.”
Analyzing their losing season, Richardson said, “Looking back, there’s a few plays here and there every game that you wish you could have back. Some games we did take a beating, but other than that, most of those games were lost on a couple of plays.”
Coming into this season, there were high expectations for this team, although there were predictions that it wouldn’t amount to last year, but it wasn’t expected to turn out the way it did as a whole.
“We felt that we had a good team coming into the 2016 season,” said corner back Darrelle Revis.
“We have to look at ourselves in the mirror, everyone on this team, and the coaching staff as well,” noted Revis, who hadn’t gotten an interception all season until Sunday’s game. There’s lots of talk of him switching to the safety position if he remains a Jet.
“I definitely think we have the talent,” said Quincy Enunwa, a fledgling star receiver on the team. “You see what we did today, regardless of who the opponent was. You see what we did against the Patriots the first game. I think we’re capable of so much,” Enunwa proudly said. “I think it’s just about finishing, coming into the game with the right mindset and working on really trusting the game plan, and doing what we’re supposed to do. All those things together can really put us in the playoffs.”