The Jets haven't helped him. Is this season different?
Darnold didn't get much from his playmakers in 2019, in part because they weren't on the field. Quincy Enunwa and Chris Herndon, who were expected to start at wide receiver and tight end, combined to play just 83 offensive snaps. The Jets were instead forced to play veterans Demaryius Thomas and Ryan Griffin, with the latter earning a contract extension after impressing in Herndon's absence.
Crowder, Robby Anderson and Le'Veon Bell were all healthy as the Jets posted a drop rate just above league average. Given the expectations on Bell after leaving the Steelers, his season had to be considered a major disappointment. For a player who wanted to be paid like he transcended the running back position, he looked a lot like an ordinary back after leaving the Pittsburgh offensive ecosystem, averaging 3.2 yards per carry and just 7 yards per reception.
Douglas overhauled the receiving corps during the offseason. Anderson left for Carolina in free agency, and Enunwa's professional future is in question while he recovers from a neck injury. The Jets will replace them with Bucs burner Breshad Perriman and second-round pick Denzel Mims. Perriman looms as a particularly high-upside option, given that the former first-round pick finished the season with 506 receiving yards and five touchdowns over his final five games. Darnold had the fourth-worst passer rating and the worst QBR of any starter in the league last season on deep passes, so Perriman could offer him a boost there.
Overall, while there's some upside in this group if Herndon lives up to what was relatively massive pre-2019 hype, this isn't one of the better receiving corps in the league. I don't blame Douglas for choosing to use his first-round pick on Becton as opposed to one of the many wideouts in this class, and there wasn't a lot available in free agency, but the Jets have had three offseasons to try to surround Darnold with talent and haven't done enough. It's tough to see the offer the Cardinals made for DeAndre Hopkins and think that the Jets shouldn't have topped it.
The other question is whether Darnold has a coaching staff that can help push him to the next level. The team fired Todd Bowles and his staff after Darnold's rookie season, and when they failed to come to an agreement at the last minute with Matt Rhule over choosing an offensive coordinator, the Jets' Plan B was to hire Adam Gase. The former Broncos offensive coordinator's star had faded after leading the Dolphins to the playoffs in 2016, his first season at the helm, but the Jets hired Gase with the hopes of getting the most out of Darnold and their developing offense.
They promptly finished 31st in offensive DVOA and 32nd in passing DVOA. As you can see, Gase's offenses as coordinator or head coach are on a troubling trend:
Essentially, Gase was excellent when the Broncos were running Peyton Manning's Colts offense for two years, pretty good with Jay Cutler in a lone season with the Bears and in his first season with Ryan Tannehill in Miami, and disastrous since then. Injuries have undoubtedly come into play, as backup quarterbacks have started 24 of 48 games for Gase over the past three seasons, but Gase's work with the starters hasn't been great, either. He didn't get much out of Cutler after the Dolphins signed him out of retirement to replace Tannehill in 2017, and it's telling that Tannehill produced a career season immediately after leaving Miami.
There's evidence that Gase both helps and hurt Darnold. To start with the positive, Gase's early game planning has generally been a positive. While the coach himself admits that he might script anywhere from 15 to 25 plays and get away from the script after a handful of snaps, if we use the first 15 plays of the game as a general measure of what has been scripted, they've worked. Darnold's QBR on the first 15 plays of games in 2019 ranked 15th in the league out of 30 starters. His QBR on all other plays was dead last. It's possible we could be measuring the effect of a weakened quarterback tiring in the second half, but I'm willing to give some credit to Gase here.
Unlike some coaches with subpar receiving corps, the Jets consistently try to find ways to free up receivers with picks. Gase also has a habit of setting up a concept early in the game before trying to take a shot with something off that concept later in the contest, which makes sense, although Darnold didn't always capitalize on those opportunities. In one December game, Gase dialed up a screen-and-go at exactly the right time, only for Darnold's throw to take his receiver out of bounds.
On the other hand, there was invariably at least one or two plays per game for the Jets where I was either sure the receiver had run the wrong route or Gase was trying to get Darnold to throw an interception. It happened frequently enough that it couldn't be the former. More than any offense I can remember, the Jets would end up with three or four receivers occupying the same small area of the field, making it impossible for Darnold to make a throw without risking an interception. It was troubling when he would sometimes miss all of them with his pass. Flooding one side of the field at multiple levels is common, of course, but these were routes with no more than a few yards of spacing.
That wasn't all. It was one thing when I saw two Jets receivers nearly run into each other downfield while they were running post and go routes together early in the season. It's another when they did the same thing on the same concept again in December! I'm sure Gase isn't teaching it that way, but if his receivers aren't concise enough to run routes in close proximity without taking each other out of the play, throw that concept in the garbage until you have talented enough receivers to pull it off.
Gase also had some concepts that just seemed like they had been drafted out of a different universe for a better offense. This orbit motion option concept against the Steelers is like asking a child who still struggles to ride his/her bike to start doing wheelies and fakies. Nothing about this seems to come naturally to the Jets, and it gets blown into orbit by the Steelers.
I also found that Gase really didn't give Darnold much help or have many answers when things went really wrong for the young quarterback. There was one game where this really manifested itself ...
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Darnold didn't get much from his playmakers in 2019, in part because they weren't on the field. Quincy Enunwa and Chris Herndon, who were expected to start at wide receiver and tight end, combined to play just 83 offensive snaps. The Jets were instead forced to play veterans Demaryius Thomas and Ryan Griffin, with the latter earning a contract extension after impressing in Herndon's absence.
Crowder, Robby Anderson and Le'Veon Bell were all healthy as the Jets posted a drop rate just above league average. Given the expectations on Bell after leaving the Steelers, his season had to be considered a major disappointment. For a player who wanted to be paid like he transcended the running back position, he looked a lot like an ordinary back after leaving the Pittsburgh offensive ecosystem, averaging 3.2 yards per carry and just 7 yards per reception.
Douglas overhauled the receiving corps during the offseason. Anderson left for Carolina in free agency, and Enunwa's professional future is in question while he recovers from a neck injury. The Jets will replace them with Bucs burner Breshad Perriman and second-round pick Denzel Mims. Perriman looms as a particularly high-upside option, given that the former first-round pick finished the season with 506 receiving yards and five touchdowns over his final five games. Darnold had the fourth-worst passer rating and the worst QBR of any starter in the league last season on deep passes, so Perriman could offer him a boost there.
Overall, while there's some upside in this group if Herndon lives up to what was relatively massive pre-2019 hype, this isn't one of the better receiving corps in the league. I don't blame Douglas for choosing to use his first-round pick on Becton as opposed to one of the many wideouts in this class, and there wasn't a lot available in free agency, but the Jets have had three offseasons to try to surround Darnold with talent and haven't done enough. It's tough to see the offer the Cardinals made for DeAndre Hopkins and think that the Jets shouldn't have topped it.
The other question is whether Darnold has a coaching staff that can help push him to the next level. The team fired Todd Bowles and his staff after Darnold's rookie season, and when they failed to come to an agreement at the last minute with Matt Rhule over choosing an offensive coordinator, the Jets' Plan B was to hire Adam Gase. The former Broncos offensive coordinator's star had faded after leading the Dolphins to the playoffs in 2016, his first season at the helm, but the Jets hired Gase with the hopes of getting the most out of Darnold and their developing offense.
They promptly finished 31st in offensive DVOA and 32nd in passing DVOA. As you can see, Gase's offenses as coordinator or head coach are on a troubling trend:
Essentially, Gase was excellent when the Broncos were running Peyton Manning's Colts offense for two years, pretty good with Jay Cutler in a lone season with the Bears and in his first season with Ryan Tannehill in Miami, and disastrous since then. Injuries have undoubtedly come into play, as backup quarterbacks have started 24 of 48 games for Gase over the past three seasons, but Gase's work with the starters hasn't been great, either. He didn't get much out of Cutler after the Dolphins signed him out of retirement to replace Tannehill in 2017, and it's telling that Tannehill produced a career season immediately after leaving Miami.
There's evidence that Gase both helps and hurt Darnold. To start with the positive, Gase's early game planning has generally been a positive. While the coach himself admits that he might script anywhere from 15 to 25 plays and get away from the script after a handful of snaps, if we use the first 15 plays of the game as a general measure of what has been scripted, they've worked. Darnold's QBR on the first 15 plays of games in 2019 ranked 15th in the league out of 30 starters. His QBR on all other plays was dead last. It's possible we could be measuring the effect of a weakened quarterback tiring in the second half, but I'm willing to give some credit to Gase here.
Unlike some coaches with subpar receiving corps, the Jets consistently try to find ways to free up receivers with picks. Gase also has a habit of setting up a concept early in the game before trying to take a shot with something off that concept later in the contest, which makes sense, although Darnold didn't always capitalize on those opportunities. In one December game, Gase dialed up a screen-and-go at exactly the right time, only for Darnold's throw to take his receiver out of bounds.
On the other hand, there was invariably at least one or two plays per game for the Jets where I was either sure the receiver had run the wrong route or Gase was trying to get Darnold to throw an interception. It happened frequently enough that it couldn't be the former. More than any offense I can remember, the Jets would end up with three or four receivers occupying the same small area of the field, making it impossible for Darnold to make a throw without risking an interception. It was troubling when he would sometimes miss all of them with his pass. Flooding one side of the field at multiple levels is common, of course, but these were routes with no more than a few yards of spacing.
That wasn't all. It was one thing when I saw two Jets receivers nearly run into each other downfield while they were running post and go routes together early in the season. It's another when they did the same thing on the same concept again in December! I'm sure Gase isn't teaching it that way, but if his receivers aren't concise enough to run routes in close proximity without taking each other out of the play, throw that concept in the garbage until you have talented enough receivers to pull it off.
Gase also had some concepts that just seemed like they had been drafted out of a different universe for a better offense. This orbit motion option concept against the Steelers is like asking a child who still struggles to ride his/her bike to start doing wheelies and fakies. Nothing about this seems to come naturally to the Jets, and it gets blown into orbit by the Steelers.
I also found that Gase really didn't give Darnold much help or have many answers when things went really wrong for the young quarterback. There was one game where this really manifested itself ...
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