If you thought the New York Jets’ season couldn’t get any worse following a 1-6 start, you were wrong.
The NFL trade deadline on Tuesday brought a whole new hash of drama to the table as star safety Jamal Adams — along with running back Le’Veon Bell — saw their names crop up in talks.
General manager Joe Douglas opted not to pull the trigger on any blockbuster deal, though he did admit that there were offers on the table.
“We fielded a lot of calls on a lot of players,” Douglas said. “One thing I will say on the players that leaked out today, those weren’t players we were shopping. But what I was taught, when a team calls you should always listen to what they have to say.”
Needless to say, it rubbed Adams the wrong way.
Now things are getting awkward.
“At the end of the week last week, I sat down with the GM and [head coach Adam] Gase and told them I want to be here in New York,” Adams wrote on his Twitter. “I was told yesterday by my agent that the GM then went behind my back and shopped me around to teams, even after I asked him to keep me here! Crazy business.”
Listening to offers and actively shopping a player are two completely separate things.
As much as Jets fans love Adams and see him as a captain of the defense or a face of the franchise, Douglas has a rebuild to pull off and a mess left by Mike Maccagnan to clean up.
A safety — no matter how good — isn’t fixing things.
Douglas maintained a high price for Adams, knowing his worth, as he asked the Dallas Cowboys for at least a first-round and two second-round picks, per ESPN.
That’s the kind of deal that would allow Douglas to accrue the capital needed to rebuild his sieve-like offensive line to protect the franchise golden boy in second-year quarterback Sam Darnold.
While Douglas didn’t necessarily do anything wrong, he should step up and at least speak to Adams in order to clear up any misunderstandings.
The last thing the Jets need is a brooding star adding to the noise during a lost season.
Which is why Gase’s comments on Wednesday were so peculiar.
When asked how he’s handled the miserable start, Gase said that it’s just “a normal NFL season. Just the results haven’t been there.”
So losing your franchise quarterback to mono, cutting a veteran offensive lineman because he had surgery without consent from the team, trading the No. 6 pick of the 2015 draft to the Giants, having your star safety publically rip the GM, and having an offense that has scored just seven touchdowns in seven games is normal.
Good to know.
Would you like to know what the icing on top of this rotten cake would be? Losing to the winless Miami Dolphins on Sunday.
Maybe it’s best if Jets fans just go into hibernation for the time being. We’ll wake you up when (if) it gets better.
