I'd be more concerned if Bowles' record was 8-8 and Rex's was 10-6.
Rex would be great coaching, say, an all-star game, or some sort of one off game. Over the course of a season, his rah rah wears thin on a team. He can still get a team up for the big game, but his teams are terribly inconsistent.
I'd rather have Bowles for a 16 game season. Maybe Rex a little more for the playoffs. But I think the steady, consistent approach has more long-term viability.
I agree for the most part, but there are times when an even keeled coach has to recognize that his team is in real danger of a letdown, like coming off an emotionally draining win over the hated Patriots. I warned all week that this game had letdown written all over it. At times I felt like I was being a killjoy, but I've been watching this league a long time, once upon a time I used to bet big money on these games, so I got pretty good at recognizing possible letdowns and this one had letdown written all over it, regardless of the stakes.
I feared that with every fiber of my being and I just couldn't keep it a secret. I was HOPING TO GOD Bowles saw it too. Maybe he did and maybe he didn't, but he didn't say anything this week to give me the impression that he SAW IT and was ON IT. In fact, earlier in the week Rick DiPietro tried to warn him about it too on ESPN Radio. DePietro was a professional athlete and he's also a Jets fans, and he talked about how his Islanders teams would have letdowns after emotional wins over the Rangers. He tried to discuss this with Bowles, just to make him aware of it, and to be honest, Bowles was mostly dismissive and said we're just gonna keep doing what we're doing.
WRONG ANSWER!!!!!
Thats what made me even more fearful and it was after that interview, and Bowles response, that I started to post about it. Its fine if you want to take an even keeled approach for a long season, not get too high or too low, I GET THAT, but when you are down to the last game of the season, coming off an emotionally draining win over a hated rival, and you are facing a coach who knows how to get his teams up for the games that matter to him, and you know he wants to knock you out of the playoffs more than he wants sex or food, and you are playing this game in their building ... you have to know, as a coach, that now is not the time for even keel, now is the time to get my team emotionally ready to play and win this game, by any means necessary.
IMO thats where Bowles failed this week. Rex got his team ready for WAR, they came out intense and determined, with a sense of purpose, and Bowles team was nowhere's close to matching their intensity. It was everything I feared about the start of this game and Bowles did nothing to combat it. If he even tried, it wasn't enough.
Thats not to say he's a bad coach, but you have to know when to ditch the normal playbook and go DEFCON 1, and this was the time to go DEFCON 1, this was not the time for going about your business as usual.
