Todd Bowles showed some phony enthusiasm for comedic effect last week when asked about Sam Darnold’s performance in the Jets’ rookie minicamp.
“He was great! I want him to play right now!” the Jets’ coach shouted, slapping his left hand on the lectern in front of him.
Though this was just Bowles showing his lighter side (something he should do more often), there is a genuine enthusiasm about Darnold and the team’s future. That was clear on Tuesday, when team chairman and CEO Christopher Johnson gushed about Darnold.
“I think people are going to look back … I honestly think they’re going to look back 20 years from now and say this is the moment the Jets shifted into a new gear, that they became a great team,” Johnson said at a charity event.
The expectations have clearly been raised with the drafting of Darnold … and that may not be a good thing for Bowles.
Bowles is entering his fourth year as coach, and the roster still has more holes than a golf tournament. The team lacks a pass rusher, a true No. 1 receiver, a tight end, a kicker and a punt/kick returner. The arrival of Darnold could create unreasonable expectations for a team that is in Year 2 of a multiyear rebuild and should not be expected to contend until 2019.
For Bowles, this could be a minefield he is navigating all season.
It is a set of circumstances that has swallowed up coaches recently who have taken quarterbacks early in the draft. Go back to 2015, when Jameis Winston went to Tampa Bay and Marcus Mariota to Tennessee with the first two picks in the draft, respectively.
Buccaneers coach Lovie Smith was fired after one season, a year in which Winston went to the Pro Bowl. Titans coach Ken Whisenhunt did not even make it through the entire season, fired after seven games.
A year later, Jeff Fisher was all smiles when his Rams took Jared Goff with the first pick. He was fired after a 4-9 start to Goff’s rookie season. Last year, John Fox handed the keys to Mitch Trubisky in Week 5. The Bears changed the locks on Fox after the season, firing him after three disappointing years.
All of this points out the dangers for a head coach of having that young franchise quarterback and the expectations that come with it. Bowles must figure out how long Darnold should sit, how to bring him along and when to turn things over to him.
The Jets signed Bowles to a two-year extension after last season that has him under contract through 2020. That is no guarantee, though. Smith, Whisenhunt and Fisher all had multiple years left on their deals when they were fired. Fisher had been given a two-year extension a few months before the Rams bounced him.
The other thing working against Bowles is the idea that a young quarterback needs a quarterback guru as his head coach instead of a defensive-minded one. Sean McVay worked wonders with Goff after taking over from Fisher, adding credence to this idea. The Buccaneers replaced Smith, a defensive coach, with his offensive coordinator, Dirk Koetter. The Bears got rid of Fox, a former defensive coordinator, in favor of Matt Nagy, the former Chiefs offensive coordinator.
The Jets are an unfinished product. ESPN ranked them as the 27th best team in football recently. Any idea that this team should be contending for a playoff spot is overly optimistic. The Jets got better this offseason at a few spots — cornerback, center and running back stand out. But the lack of a pass rusher is still glaring and will hurt this defense. They also need recent top draft picks Leonard Williams, Darron Lee, Jamal Adams and Marcus Maye to take a big step this year, which is not guaranteed.
This is another year when Bowles will be graded on progress, not the postseason. That being said, the bar to clear is higher this year than it was in 2017.If the Jets have another losing season and Bowles survives, he will be the first Jets coach to suffer three consecutive losing seasons and return for a fourth since Weeb Ewbank.
Ewbank had three straight 5-8-1 seasons from 1963-65. The last year of that run, Ewbank had Joe Namath, a 22-year-old rookie, starting at quarterback. Three years later, Ewbank and Namath won a Super Bowl.
The Jets would take a repeat of that, but there is a long way to go and plenty of hurdles for Bowles to clear to get there.