Storyline: On Sunday Quinn will be playing for a NFL Championship and next year Bowles will likely be coaching for his job. It’s life as a Jets coach–something Quinn should be thankful he avoided.
Second-year Falcons head coach Dan Quinn will lead his team to the Super Bowl on Sunday. Not surprisingly, this has Jets fans and several media members asking a “What if?” — What if he was the Jets coach?
Courtesy: Atlanta Falcons blog – AJC.com
Manish Mehta of The New York Daily News wrote that Quinn had been interested in coaching the Jets. Mehta claimed that if the Jets had waited until after the Super Bowl three years ago, he might have taken the job. The Jets didn’t want to wait, so they hired Todd Bowles in fear they’d lose him to another team.
It’s easy to play revisionist history: Quinn is in the Super Bowl and Bowles is coming off a five-win season. But the reality is that nobody second-guessed the hire last year when Bowles went 10-6 and Quinn missed the playoffs at 8-8.
But it’s pointless to second-guess the decision now. First of all, I don’t believe Quinn would have had success with the Jets. He wouldn’t have had a quarterback he does now in Matt Ryan. Second, there’s no guarantee he would have taken the Jets job–despite what Mehta speculates.
One reason? The Falcons job is better. The Falcons had an established quarterback, while the Jets had Gino Smith, an incumbent quarterback who struggled. It would have been a no-brainer for Quinn to take Atlanta’s offer.
Courtesy: WTOP.com
But there’s even more to this “What if?” story. If the Jets had hired Quinn, Mehta says that Falcons offensive coordinator (and soon-to-be 49ers head coach) Kyle Shanahan would have been in the same position with the Jets. New York, so the speculation goes, would have traded for Redskins’ quarterback Kirk Cousins.
That’s not only speculative it puts Cousins in the same category as Ryan. It’s more accurate to equate Cousins with Ryan Fitzpatrick: he’s an average QB who has a penchant to throw interceptions at key times.
The Falcons outshine the Jets in another way–management. Atlanta has an established general manager in Thomas Dimitroff, who has drafted well in his Falcons tenure. The Falcons also have a good front office in Scott Pioli and Phil Emery, who know a thing or two about building a football team from their days with the Patriots. How different is that from the situation in NY? Quinn would have been working with an inexperienced general manager.
Courtesy: nj.com
Let’s face it. A head coach can only be as great as his players. Bill Belichick is that rare coach who makes his players successful. There’s no guarantee Quinn would have been great with the Jets’ roster–a team that was rebuilding. The Falcons he inherited were championship-caliber.
I don’t know if Bowles is a great coach. The jury is still out. In his first year, the team was disciplined and smart. Most importantly, the Jets won. The second year was just the opposite.
But I’m not surprised that the Jets took a step back in 2016. Given his career track record I didn’t think Fitzpatrick would be able to duplicate success. Plus, the players were getting older. There isn’t much youth on the team outside of Leonard Williams, Robby Anderson, Darron Lee, and Quincy Enunwa.
The wishful thinking was that the Jets would win seven or eight games because they had to play a tough schedule with playoff-caliber teams. But it turned out to be worse than anyone thought. It wasn’t only the losses that hurt. Bowles lost control of the locker room. Players mouthed off at each other and Sheldon Richardson was out-of-control all season long (e.g., skipping practices and going on Snapchat to say he did not care about the Jets game against the Dolphins in December.)
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Would Quinn have changed all that? No one knows, including Quinn. That’s another reason why it’s a futile to play the “What If?” game with Quinn as Jets coach.
What we know is this: On Sunday Quinn will be playing for a NFL Championship and next year Bowles will likely be coaching for his job. Bowles is experiencing life as a Jets coach–something Quinn should be thankful he is not part of.
