Adam Gase is the Jets’ modern-day Rich Kotite

History repeats itself when you don’t learn from past mistakes. The New York Jets aren’t good students because Adam Gase is just 21st century Rich Kotite.

When you’re the little brother team in the Big Apple, you got to find ways to win, no matter how small, petty or inconsequential. Not since Joe Namath guaranteed a victory in Super Bowl III have the New York Jets done a ton of winning. Since 1969, their stadium rival New York Giants have won four Super Bowls since Gang Green last been to one. It’s been a rough 50 years for the Jets.

Although the Jets have won their fair share of press conferences, they’ve also lost a ton along the way. All the while, it’s been a ton of overselling, underdelivering and not appropriately replacing Namath as a franchise quarterback. The dysfunction continues, as the Jets are 1-6 through Week 8 under first-year head coach Adam Gase. Have we seen this before?

Yes, yes, you have, Gang Green. You had a 1990s version of Adam Gase running your team into the ground. That guy was Rich Kotite and it did not end well for him in New York, much like how it’s probably going to go with Gase as the Jets head coach approaching 2020.

As with Gase, Kotite had moments of success as a first-time NFL head coach in the NFL, albeit fleeting. Kotite took over for Buddy Ryan as head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles in 1991. The Birds won 10 and 11 games in 1991 and ’92, including a trip to the NFC playoffs the second year.

Then, the wheels started to fall off, as Philadelphia went 8-8 in 1993 and 7-9 in 1994. Kotite was fired after the ’94 season and was picked as New York’s replacement for some guy named Pete Carroll, who the Jets fired after one year of 6-10. Kotite would go on to win four games over two seasons with Gang Green from 1995 to ’96 before never coaching again.

As with Gase, Kotite botched his introductory press conference. While he could control his eyes and didn’t look like he’d been up for 72 straight hours on a coaching bender, Kotite did say “I don’t have all the answers.” That’s exactly what the New York media market wanted to hear on that 1995 winter morning. It was the statement the New York media put on his Jets’ epitaph.

While Kotite claimed he didn’t know how to work a headset on the sidelines, Gase sure did hit those smelling salts hard on the sideline in the preseason, foreshadowing what has been another embarrassing season in New York professional sports. Even the New York Knicks and the New York Mets have to look at this mess and wonder what the hell is going on with the Jets?

Though we haven’t seen a Charles Oakley vs. Madison Square Garden security-level debacle at MetLife Stadium just yet, we did see that Sam Darnold said he saw ghosts in the New England Patriots secondary while on the Jets sidelines. Gase defended his quarterback, but how in the hell was that allowed to be aired on Monday Night Football? What a disgraceful lack of oversight!

The point is the Jets signed up for this in hiring Gase. They competed against him twice annually for three years while he was leading the Miami Dolphins. Just because an offensive mind is available doesn’t mean you need to hire him to coach your football team. While there was a ceiling with Todd Bowles, Gase it taking a shovel and making the Jets’ basement the earth’s mantle.

We all get that Gase got along with Peyton Manning great, but the Jets are treating Darnold like Indianapolis Colts handled Andrew Luck. There was no way that Darnold was going to fail coming out of USC. He carried a downtrodden Pac-12 blue-blood to a Rose Bowl victory over Penn State. This guy was unbreakable, but the Jets are finding ways to mangle their star quarterback.

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This is what you get when you don’t learn how to learn. You make the same dumb mistakes other organizations make or even worse, you make the same mistakes you made as an organization years ago. Darnold deserves better. Safety Jamal Adams deserves better. Most importantly, Jets fans deserve better. For now, history is repeating itself with Gang Green in 21st Century Kotite.

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