This performance is why Jets could never save Todd Bowles
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — To a man, up and down the rows of lockers, the Jets tried to make a case for their coach. One by one they stepped forward and asked that they be the ones held accountable. Player by player they tried to shield their coach from what’s surely coming in a couple of weeks.
“The coaches get the blame,” defensive lineman Leonard Williams said after the Jets lost 26-22 to the Titans at Nissan Stadium to fall to 3-9 on the season. “They’re the ones who are higher up on the chart. But it’s the players who make the mistakes. We’re the ones who deserve the blame.”
It was a noble gesture, if a futile one. The Jets lost Sunday for most of the same reasons they’ve lost 32 of their last 45 games: when it’s most important to be disciplined, to stay away from killer penalties, they double down and seem to produce them by the gross.
And the arrow of responsibility points in only one direction, despite their protests.
“It’s difficult to go through as a coach,” Todd Bowles conceded. “I’m sure it’s frustrating to go through as a player.”
The players seem most frustrated by the fact they can’t seem to help themselves, and as a result they are doing anything but help Bowles, or help to save his job.
see also
Jets report card: A disaster in every spot but one
Grades from the Jets’ 26-22 loss to the Titans on…
The Jets had 11 penalties for 96 yards. On the day. But it was on the final drive that they really haunted: a holding call on Morris Claiborne when the Titans were pinned and had themselves committed a holding that would have sent them further backward; a hands-to-the-face call on Jordan Jenkins that nullified a sack and would have set the Titans back to third-and-long; and a 15-yard facemask penalty on Trumaine Johnson that, coupled with a 25-yard run by Marcus Mariota, set the Titans up beautifully for the game-winning score with 36 seconds left.
That was it for your ballgame. And that will soon be it for Bowles, despite his players’ pleas.
“This game is solely on the players,” Jenkins said. “The coaches put us in good position. We made mistakes by committing penalties and not executing. [Bowles] didn’t go out there and commit penalties. That’s what hurts me the most, is that I had a part in making another man sort of look bad. It falls on me and everyone who commits penalties.”
It was more of the same from linebacker Darron Lee: “You can’t sit here and sat anything like, ‘They didn’t coach us right.’ None of that. It’s on us. Penalties. Same story, different day.”
Added linebacker Avery Williamson: “It’s getting to the point now where it’s becoming annoying because we’re not doing what we’re supposed to do. We still have to keep policing everybody, myself included. We have to try to eliminate as many mistakes as possible.”
