He's the head coach. Everything should be taken into account.
If Darnold takes the next step and throws for 30 TDs but the team is still losing a lot of football games, a change should be considered.
Couldn’t agree more. Gase was brought here to win Super Bowls. The best path to doing that is to develop Darnold first and foremost. But if Sam becomes the best QB in football, it doesn’t matter if we still can only go 7-9.
If Gase isn’t moving us towards winning rings, Sams progress is only partially relevant.
It also bears pointing out, that even if Gase develops Sam as a player, that does NOT preclude any other coach from bringing Sam along as well as the rest of the team. I was of the mindset we never should have hired him, and we should have fired him at the end of the year. I think Sam needs more help than what Gase’s atrocious scheme last year provided.
Now that we have an offensive line and added a young exciting weapon in Mims as we head into year 2 of the offense Gase has no excuses left. Especially when you add the fact our atrocious injury luck last year will at least somewhat regress to the mean. If we don’t progress as an offense into the top 20 and preferably top 16, Gase’s job needs to be in serious jeopardy if we aren’t somehow going 10-6 despite a meh offense.
The one thing Gase deserves credit for is Greg Williams. We bitched and moaned that Rex and Bowles never bothered to hire a real OC. Well Gase did his job hiring a legitimate (and apparently quite elite) coordinator on the opposite side of the ball, and frankly it’s almost certain that it saved Gase’s job. If he had hired Loggains equivalent on the defensive side of the ball, we would have gone 3-13.