Adam Gase walked out of the trainer’s room and into the locker room about 30 minutes after the Patriots had embarrassed his Jets 33-0 on national television.
The head coach walked straight over to Sam Darnold’s locker, where the young quarterback was buttoning his shirt and trying to make sense of what had just happened. Gase put his hand on Darnold’s shoulder and offered some words of reassurance.
The rebuilding of Darnold’s confidence had begun.
The coach and quarterback are going to be under the microscope this week. For Darnold, the question will be how he rebounds from his five-turnover nightmare performance when he was “seeing ghosts” and Jets fans were seeing every failed quarterback they had put their hopes in before, from Richard Todd to Geno Smith.