Though I wish no ill will on Jets head coach Herm Edwards, there’s something to be said for the way a 2-10 season spices up his press conferences. From Newsday’s Ken Berger.
In the course of answering innocuous questions about the sentimental quest to get Curtis Martin 1,000 yards for the 11th consecutive season, Edwards lamented having been criticized for calling a draw play on third-and-5 from the Patriots’ 19 with 1:13 left in the second quarter.
Martin was stopped for no gain, and the Jets settled for a field goal that tied the game at 3. It was the closest the offense got to the end zone all day in a 16-3 loss.
“I get questioned for third-and-five running the draw, trying to tie the game up before the half,” Edwards (above) said. ” ‘Why didn’t you throw?’ The Patriots had a third-and-four on the 27-yard line. They ran a draw, missed a field goal. No one questioned them. But I get questioned because we lost. I understand that.
“It’s part of the process of being the head coach,” Edwards continued.
“That’s OK. But the same scenario, they’re on the 27-yard line, they missed a [45-yard] field goal. How about that?”
With that, Edwards shuffled his notes, tapped them against the lectern, and said, “Press conference over.”
It was strange stuff, considering Edwards had not even been asked about the third-down draw play since the postgame news conference Sunday. (What was the point? The season’s over.) Just chalk it up to the mounting burden of a lost season.
“When you’re in this situation, it’s easy to go, ‘You know what? It doesn’t matter,’ ” Edwards said. “It matters. It matters even more now to me.”
Asked if he’s considering trying anything new offensively, Edwards frighteningly invoked a variation of Rich Kotite’s “no cookbook answers” line.
“There’s no magical potion here,” he said. “We have to play this way, OK? There’s no other way to play for us right now. I think everyone’s missing that. We act like every week there’s something going to be different. What’s going to be different? The difference is, we’ve got to score some points. We’ve got to find a way to put points on the board.