READ MORE: NY Jets\u2019 coaches can save face by solving Panthers puzzle<\/a><\/p>\nNew York had many chances to see that Fields\u2019 pre-game ailments were preventing him from playing at a passable level. The Jets could have won the game by pulling Fields for Tyrod Taylor after the third quarter. They could have even done it after one of his failed drives in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
It made too much sense. Fields was crushing the team, and if the coaches knew that it may have been at least partially because of his health, they should have had a quick trigger. Not only would their knowledge of his ailments make it easier to trust that they were making the right call by pulling him out in favor of Taylor, but it would have given them an easy escape in the media after the game.<\/p>\n
With the built-in excuse of his lower-body injuries, the Jets could have passed off their benching of Fields as injury-related and turned back to him as the starter in Week 7. Instead, Aaron Glenn has to step up to the podium and give cringeworthy answers as to why Fields continues to start despite poor play. This all could have been avoided. Fans and media would have given Glenn more leeway if the team framed an injury-related benching for Fields.<\/p>\n
If Fields has truly been playing through weak legs, the Jets\u2019 failure to bench him makes them look even more incompetent than they already did. This is not to say that Fields\u2019 weak legs were enough to excuse how poorly he played (his mistakes are mostly mental), but it is baffling that the staff couldn\u2019t take advantage of such an easy avenue to make a change that would have improved the team\u2019s odds of winning. Fields arguably deserved a benching even before accounting for any injury issues; if injury issues were involved, it should have been the no-brainer to end all no-brainers.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s only if the team did view Fields\u2019 ailments as a legitimate concern. We don\u2019t know that for sure. If that wasn\u2019t the case, the Jets\u2019 coaches would come out looking bad in a different way.<\/p>\n
2. The ailment is exaggerated, and Engstrand is simply making poor schematic decisions<\/p>\n
The second possibility is that Fields\u2019 pain following his contusion was an exaggeration that he threw out there to try and excuse his historically poor play. Aside from being a bad look for Fields, this would deflect blame onto offensive coordinator Tanner Engstrand for his questionable game planning.<\/p>\n
Considering that Fields fully practiced over the next two weeks following the Miami game, his contusion clearly wasn\u2019t severe enough for the Jets to feel as if any sort of precaution was necessary for their starting quarterback. This suggests that he may have been pretty much 100% healthy from a physical standpoint.<\/p>\n
And as we look back through Fields\u2019 four-game stretch of declined involvement in the run game, there is plenty of evidence that his athleticism has been perfectly fine over that stretch. His most impressive athletic feat of the year was his 43-yard touchdown scramble against the Dolphins in Week 4, yet the Jets were already dwindling his usage on designed runs before he suffered a contusion in that game or even his concussion in Week 2.<\/p>\n
If Fields has been perfectly fine, and his supposed lower-body discomfort was not flagged by the team as a real concern, then it means Engstrand has simply been making bizarre decisions with the scheme.<\/p>\n
The Jets signed Fields and handed him their starting quarterback job for one reason: His elite abilities as a rusher give the offense a higher ceiling than it would have with Tyrod Taylor. So, what\u2019s the point of using Fields if he is going to get three designed runs per game?<\/p>\n
Engstrand can be excused for his game plans if he was building them with the knowledge that Fields was less than 100% (pointing us back to possibility No. 1: Glenn should have benched him).<\/p>\n
But if Fields\u2019 health has been a non-factor in the Jets\u2019 recent game-planning, it\u2019s a bad look for the rookie OC. That would mean Engstrand has simply neglected to feature the one thing Fields is great at\u2014the same thing that made the Jets\u2019 offense hum in its lone quality performance this year.<\/p>\n
Someone looks silly here<\/p>\n
Fields\u2019 comments about his lower-body discomfort make either Aaron Glenn or Tanner Engstrand look bad.<\/p>\n
We can\u2019t say which side is more at fault without knowing the information on Fields\u2019 health that New York\u2019s coaches were given throughout the past few weeks. Much of this conversation is speculative.<\/p>\n
However, there is no way for New York\u2019s coaching staff to come out of this looking good. One of two things happened:<\/p>\n
Glenn missed an easy opportunity to use the red flags about Fields\u2019 health as a green light to bench him against Denver, likely costing the Jets a win and also creating more trouble for himself in the media.<\/p>\n
Fields has been perfectly fine, and Engstrand is flat-out neglecting to feature his starting quarterback\u2019s best attribute.<\/p>\n
One way or another, the Jets\u2019 coaching staff is mismanaging the game\u2019s most important position. Either they\u2019ve hidden Fields\u2019 physical limitations from the world\u2014only making themselves look more foolish for not benching him\u2014or their offensive coordinator is building suboptimal game plans.<\/p>\n
Take your pick, Jets fans. It\u2019s a lose-lose scenario for a coaching staff whose quest for a victory is taking longer than Justin Fields throwing a quick out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since his standout debut with the New York Jets, Justin Fields hasn\u2019t looked like the same player. New…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7013,7014,9,11,430,10,22,7015,7016,7017,7018,7019],"class_list":{"0":"post-7919","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-free-content","9":"tag-nanias-numbers","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-headlines","12":"tag-new-york-jets","13":"tag-new-york-news","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-ny-jets-analytics","16":"tag-ny-jets-players","17":"tag-ny-jets-stats","18":"tag-standard","19":"tag-tanner-engstrand"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}