..Accountability ~ ~ ~

[kelly]

— After watching his team absorb its fourth loss in five games last week, Todd Bowles broke from what had become the norm under his predecessor Rex Ryan and called out the Jets’ rookie players.

Mostly he was referring to receiver Devin Smith.

Against Buffalo two weeks ago, Smith fumbled a kickoff return, which a Buffalo defender ran back for a touchdown.

Last Sunday against Houston, Smith dropped a beautifully thrown pass in the end zone. The Jets wound up losing, 24-17.“Our rookies have to stop being rookies,” Bowles said. “They need to grow up. They get paid like everybody else and they’ve got to start acting like they’re not in college anymore.”The Jets have four rookies on the roster, and three of them — Smith, linebacker Lorenzo Mauldin and defensive end Leonard Williams — play major roles.When Bowles challenged the Jets’ first-year players — Smith in particular — to stop playing like rookies, he meant that they shouldn’t look to save the season on every play, as Smith appeared to try to do against Buffalo when he took a kickoff deep in the end zone and tried to run it out.

The way do to that is to not let the game get bigger than you,” linebacker Demario Davis, a four-year veteran, said after Sunday’s 38-20 win over the Dolphins. “You have to keep the game very simple. A rookie pass rusher can’t try to be Muhammad Wilkerson; a rookie wide receiver can’t try to be Brandon Marshall. You have to keep the game very small.”Bowles said that his comments hadn’t been aimed at Smith, but at each of the Jets’ first-year players, though Smith was clearly front and center. Ryan would never have publicly called out one of his players. Early in his tenure, we tended to interpret that as Ryan protecting them and having their back. In fact, that devolved into a lack of accountability, and eventually it came back to bite Ryan.Bowles was hired to change the culture of a team that has gone without a title since the 1968-69 season.

“Rex and Todd have different approaches in what they do,” said D’Brickashaw Ferguson, the veteran offensive lineman who is playing in his 10th N.F.L. season. “This is part of Todd’s personality. He sees something and he addresses it.”The Jets’ record this season, whatever it ends up being, should not be taken as a referendum on the effectiveness of Bowles’s approach to re-establishing a sense of accountability. But Sunday was yet another test of his leadership.Bowles, one of three first-year coaches in the league, opened the season having to deal with the four-game suspension of Sheldon Richardson and the loss of Geno Smith, his announced starting quarterback, whose jaw was broken by Ikemefuna Enemkpali.Ryan, now coaching Buffalo, true to form, not only picked up Enemkpali after Bowles cut him but made him a captain for the Bills’ game against the Jets.

That’s not accountability.

Perhaps Ryan should call out players instead of protecting them.Criticism is difficult to take, but it can provide a path to improvement.Smith responded to the criticism Sunday with two receptions, one of them for a touchdown.

There were no drops.

Before Smith left the Jets’ locker room on Sunday, I asked if he felt he was no longer a rookie.“No, I know I’m still a rookie,” he said, laughing. “But you can’t play like it.”When the Jets struggled after a 4-1 start, there was talk that Bowles’s honeymoon could be over had the Jets lost to Miami. That was foolish, but typical, New York impatience. There is no hot seat waiting for Bowles, and he doesn’t have the team playing as if its back were against the wall." We don’t feel that way,” Bowles said. “We know we have to win ball games. Everybody is in the same boat right now.” He referred to the Jets as “a work in progress.”

“I think we have a ways to go as far as being where we want to be,” he said.

After a practice last week, Bowles said: “If you get too high, this game has a way of humbling you. If you get too low, sometimes you pull off some upsets. You have to be even-keeled and you have to take it as it comes. As long as you work your tail off and do the right things, it will work out.”I liked what Bowles said earlier in the season about Richardson after he returned from his suspension for violating the league’s substance-abuse policy.Asked if he thought Richardson had learned his lesson, Bowles eschewed the canned quick-fix answer.“I don’t think you learn a lesson over a month or so,” he said. “I think it’s an ongoing deal that won’t be answered until later on in life.”

You can say the same thing about a season and a coach’s tenure: You have to let them play out.Ryan was hired to barrel in and fix a broken culture. He attempted to do it with bodacious razzle-dazzle.But he didn’t fix the problem, and in fact created some problems of his own. Bowles’s approach seems to be that whatever problems exist won’t be fixed in one game or one season, and certainly not his first season.

As Bowles targets the Jets’ core of young players, his first major mission is re-establishing accountability.An encouraging giant step for long-suffering Jets fans.

>      http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/30/sports/football/win-or-losetodd-bowles-demands-accountability.html?action=click&contentCollection=Pro Football&module=RelatedCoverage&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article

 

[JiFtheOracle]

Ryan would never have publicly called out one of his players.

Never!

http://www.nj.com/jets/index.ssf/2013/05/rex_ryan_calls_out_jets_olb_qu.html

After Coples finished the season leading the team in sacks, Ryan is still not pleased. He used his press conference today as a forum to express his displeasure in Coples' weight room performance.

"If Quinton doesn't do a better job in the weight room, then he might have to ... he's going to have to compete like anyone else for a job," Ryan said. "I'm a little disappointed in Q in the weight room the last day."

http://nypost.com/2014/08/12/jets-amaro-get-that-mike-ditka-tape-out-of-here/

 

Ryan offered the suggestion last weekend, after Amaro caught two passes in the Jets’ preseason opener against the Colts. The Jets coach thought Amaro could have had two other receptions if he had been more aggressive.

“Give him tapes of Mike Ditka or something and say, ‘This is how we want you to play,’ ” Ryan said Saturday. “Recognize you’re a big guy. You need to be a bully out there. When that ball’s thrown up, you’ve got to go catch it. I don’t care where it is.”

[slats]

The thing that really jumped out at me when Devin Smith caught that touchdown was how excited his team mates were for him. They weren't just pumped about the TD, they seemed much more excited about Devin getting off the snide. It was great to see. Tells me they like the kid, and that they believe in him, too. Love to see him finish the season strong. 

[drdetroit]

Yay