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Did Adam Gase Get Caught Lying About Taking Over Control of the Jets’ Play-Calling?

In Monday’s Hot Clicks: Adam Gase’s testy exchange with reporters, an F1 driver’s miraculous escape from a horrifying crash and more.

Dan Gartland

Who’s to blame for the Jets’ lousy offense?

At this point in the season, it’s difficult to come up with more ways to describe just how bad the Jets are. They stink to high heaven. They’re dead last in points scored per game (by a margin of 5.2 points) and fourth-worst in points allowed. They’re a joke. 

The offensive ineptitude is especially galling, considering coach Adam Gase’s reputation as a quarterback whisperer. He was brought in to nurture No. 3 draft pick Sam Darnold’s talents, just like he did with, uh ... Ryan Tannehill? 

After the Jets dropped their first six games of the season, Gase turned the play-calling duties over to offensive coordinator Dowell Loggains. In last week’s game against the Chargers, it looked like Gase had resumed control of the play-calling, though. He could be seen on the broadcast looking at his play sheet and talking into his head set between plays, but Gase explained that this was part of the Jets’ strangely convoluted play-calling structure. Loggains picks the play, tells it to Gase and Gase feeds it to the quarterback, the coach told reporters after the game. It sounds mostly like an unnecessarily complicated game of telephone, but it also allows Gase to call his own play when he wants. He said that he reserved the right to veto Loggains’s calls and send in his own play when he felt like Loggains didn’t pick the right one. 

Before Sunday’s game against the Dolphins, ESPN’s Chris Mortensen reported that Gase was expected to take over as the primary play caller again. But Gase denied it, telling reporters after the game, “I didn’t take over. We’ve done the same thing the last four games.”

The New York press corps wasn’t buying it. 

“We were watching Dowell for the whole game,” an incredulous reporter told Gase. “He wasn’t doing anything. He was just standing there.”

“It’s not hard. This is not hard,” Gase responded. “We go through it the drive before. ‘Hey, these are the three plays.’ I do the third downs.”

Then, a second reporter chimed in to say they could see Loggains talking with offensive line coach Frank Pollack during the third quarter while Gase was calling the plays. 

“Yeah, when we got down then I was trying to do some of the two-minute stuff,” Gase admitted somewhat sheepishly. 

So did Gase get caught in a lie? It sure seems like it. Just look at how his demeanor changes over the course of that clip. He goes from defiantly denying that he was calling the plays to looking like a kid who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. 

Any reasonable head coach, when asked whether they had taken over the play-calling, would have said, “Dowell called the plays at the beginning, but I took over later when we were trying to dig ourselves out of a hole.” To quote Gase, it’s not hard. 

As Mortensen said when reporting that Gase was back in the driver’s seat, he and Darnold “have their futures tied together down [the] stretch.” If New York’s franchise quarterback finds his stride under Gase’s direction in these last few games, maybe the Jets can pick up a few wins and take themselves out of the race for Trevor Lawrence, thus keeping Darnold in New York and perhaps saving Gase’s job, too. 

So why wouldn’t Gase just cop to having been calling the plays? Maybe because of how poorly the offense played. After scoring 55 points in the previous two weeks, with Loggains (at least allegedly) running the offense and Joe Flacco under center as Darnold nursed a shoulder injury, the Jets managed just three points (an opening-drive field goal after they stalled in the red zone) in their loss to the Dolphins. Darnold managed just 197 passing yards and threw two picks.  

It’s absolutely baffling that Gase hasn’t been fired yet. The results speak for themselves, but it’s even more unbelievable when you consider what a jerk he’s been. He doesn’t seem like a pleasant guy to work for or to employ. By refusing to take responsibility for the play-calling, Gase tried to shift the blame for the dismal offensive performance onto Loggains. It was a desperate attempt to save his own skin, and probably just delaying the inevitable. He’d be lucky to survive through the end of the season. 

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Dan Gartland
DAN GARTLAND

Dan Gartland is the writer and editor of Sports Illustrated’s flagship daily newsletter, SI:AM, covering everything an educated sports fan needs to know. He joined the SI staff in 2014, having previously been published on Deadspin and Slate. Gartland, a graduate of Fordham University, is a former Sports Jeopardy! champion (Season 1, Episode 5).

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