New York Jets: Jeremy Bates’ star already on the rise
There’s one person who stood out for the New York Jets on Friday night against the Falcons — not a player, but offensive coordinator Jeremy Bates.
A star is born in New York, and it’s not a player on the New York Jets roster. Yes, Sam Darnold had a good night, but so did rookie. Rookie offensive coordinator Jeremy Bates showed you why Todd Bowles elevated him to the role.
In recent times, talking about a Jets coordinator meant one thing. His phase wasn’t doing their job, and it was time to question the play calling. When it comes to Bates, though, it’s completely different.
Bates showed is a lot early on, and that’s a-typical of a preseason game. Normally, preseason game plans are vanilla, but early on Bates showed us a little of everything he’s learned as an assistant throughout his years in the NFL.
Bates is entering his 11th season as an assistant coach in the NFL. He’s served under Lovie Smith, Pete Carroll, Herm Edwards, Jon Gruden, and Mike Shanahan prior to being hired by Bowles as the quarterbacks coach.
Last night you saw a lot of the Shanahan influence, and also a lot of West Coast Offense in his game plan. Maybe it was vanilla offense, and he’s hiding the real stuff for Week 1 against the Lions, or maybe it was a tiny glimpse of what’s to come.
We saw empty sets, zone runs, and quarterback bootlegs (both off of play action and not). We saw short, intermediate, and deep throws. We even had tight end sightings, which is like seeing Big Foot or the Lock Ness Monster in a Jets game.
The biggest takeaway from that game is that Bates will use his players to the best of their abilities. He will allow them to utilize their best attributes and build the offense around that rather than settle for vanilla.
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Mike Maccagnan went for broke to move up to get what turned out to be Darnold in the NFL Draft. He seems to be learning from past mistakes by management, and that has a trickle-down effect on the rest of the organization, because Bates seems to be learning from the mistakes of his predecessors too.