Issue #30: Adam Gase, Football's Cursed Idol
It's October. Time to talk about the scariest thing in football: Teams that employ Adam Gase.
Hello, my name is Colin. Welcome to the 30th issue of The Wood Report, an eclectic smorgasbord of sports “news” and humor.
We have plenty to cover this week. Football is in full swing with every primetime game vying to be Game of the Year. The MLB playoff race is coming down to the wire with this last week taking on a defacto playoff quality for multiple teams. The WNBA playoffs kicked off last week with a near massive upset by the 12-20 Liberty and both semi-finals locked at 1-1. And the Ryder cup brings out loud chants of “USA! USA! USA!” all over the course. But first, let’s take a look at this week’s main story.
This Week’s Main Story
Adam Gase is one of the greatest gifts the NFL has ever given the internet. He is a punchline so easy that just mentioning his name elicits knowing smirks about the incompetence he displays on a weekly basis. But there is something more sinister below that surface humor. Adam Gase is a trickster, hiding in plain sight. Everyone can see what he does to teams, but his silver tongue and mesmerizing eyes short circuit the brains of owners and coaches everywhere. His ability to continue landing jobs to coach football flies in the face of all logic and reason.
Gase is ostensibly an “offensive guru” but there is no real evidence to back up this claim. He is the Anti King Midas. Everything he touches turns to rust. He ruins even the most promising prospects. The teams that hire him are akin to the protagonists of a horror film that decide to buy the creepy doll 5 minutes into the movie. Every single person watching knows that terrifying doll with the unblinking stare is going to fuck things up, but unbelievably, the new owners seem completely unaware of the cursed nature of the doll. The only way to survive is to purge yourself of the demon spirit before he consumes you whole.
Today we are going to take a look at the teams and players that had the unfortunate pleasure of crossing paths with the Adam Gase to see how they did while afflicted with this plague and also see that things do get better immediately after breaking that hex. This is the Curse of Gase.
Sam Darnold
Last week’s Thursday Night Football is what prompted this deep dive. Sam Darnold is the starting QB for the 3-0 Carolina Panthers and he is thriving down there after looking like a massive bust during his time in New York with Gase. While playing for the Jets, Darnold routinely looked overwhelmed attempting to helm the offense. In 2019 and 2020, the two seasons of the curse, Darnold threw 24 interceptions in 25 games. His passer rating of 79.1 was only ahead of Dwayne Haskins among starting QBs. And of course there is the infamous “seeing ghosts” comment he made while mic’d up that gets endless play anytime he messed up.
Having escaped the clutches of Adam, Darnold is starting to show why he was taken with the 3rd overall pick in the draft. On Thursday night, he threw for over 300 yards for the 2nd consecutive game. In two years under Gase, Darnold threw for over 300 yards two times total. Sam has 3 TDs to just 1 INT and has added 3 scores on the ground. He looks confident and comfortable in the system in Carolina and he is leading them to success that he never saw with the Jets. To add to the insult, Darnold connected with former Jets reciever Robby Anderson for a touchdown against them in Week 1 and Anderson celebrated the only way possible.
Miami Dolphins
The Dolphins employed the Curse from 2016 through 2018. It was his first head coaching position and he was expected to take a young ascending team to the next level. He was entrusted with rising players like Ryan Tannehill, Jarvis Landry, Kenyan Drake, and Jay Ajayi. Of course that was a false promise. In 3 seasons in Miami, Gase’s teams never finished in the top half of the league in either offense or defense. In he final two season there, it got so bad that they ranked 26th or lower in points scored and points allowed both seasons. He finished with a record of 23-25 during his time in South Beach, which apparently was good enough to land him a job with the Jets.
When Gase left the franchise to move up north, Miami struggle to come out of the malaise that hung over them. They started the 2019 season winless, going 0-7 behind a combination of Josh Rosen and the bad version of Ryan Fitzpatrick. Their redemption came in Week 9, when they faced off against division rival New York Jets and that maniac on the other sideline, Adam Gase. This is the part of the movie where you thought the evil was dead, but they come back for one final stand. The only way to truly break the curse was to defeat Gase on the field. You can tell this was an especially cursed game as there were 2 safeties scored. The Dolphins prevailed, which sparked a 5-4 finish to the season, as well as a 10-6 record in 2020 (missing out on the playoffs by tiebreaker). They struggled, but have finally found the light at the end of the tunnel.
Ryan Tannehill and Kenyan Drake
In addition to the Miami franchise, let’s highlight to specific players from that time that seemed to blossom in the aftermath of a Gase-filled career. Ryan Tannehill had been around the league for a bit by the time Adam entered his life, but that triggered a sharp downturn in his play. Although Tannehill had posted two 4000+ yard seasons just before 2016, he seemed to regress hard. In his three plague seasons, Tannehill never broke 3,000 yards or 20 touchdowns and he missed a full season to injury. It looked like his career as a starting QB was coming to an end. But then he signed with the Tennessee Titans and completely turn it around. Through 2019 and 2020, he would have the 2nd best passer rating in the league, behind Drew Brees and ahead of Aaron Rodgers (this is the same timeframe when Sam Darnold had the 2nd worst, a fantastic juxtaposition). He became a master deep ball passer in an offense that played to his strengths. He also won Comeback Player of the Year, possibly in reference to coming back from “being coached by Adam Gase.”
Kenyan Drake is another in a long line of supremely talented Alabama running backs. He came to the NFL with the Dolphins and it seemed like he might not succeed the way his predecessors all had. In his 1st three years, that aligned perfectly with Gase, he was either ineffective or benched for a 35 year old Frank Gore. In the two years since, he has been a revelation. He has rushed for 1772 yards and 18 touchdowns in 29 post-curse games.
Chicago Bears
As we continue going in a reverse order tour of the many stops of his career, we next look at the 2015 Bears. Gase was the offensive coordinator of this team for just one season. From 2014 to 2015, he helped Jay Cutler and the team improve from 5-11 to 6-10 and the offense improve from 23rd in the league to… 23rd in the league. Cutler threw 21 TDs to 11 INTs, which actually represented a career low in INT%, so I guess that’s progress? All of that was of course good enough to get him hired as the Miami HC.
What happened to Bears post-Gase? Well, they actually got much worse. The Gase effect lasted much longer in Chicago than other cities. The Bears have always had poor performances from the QB position, but it reached a nadir in these years. The 2016 and 2017 Bears combined for an 8-24 record, and 29th out of 32 on offense. That is, until Week 6 of 2018. That Sunday, they travelled to Miami to regain their dignity against Mr. Gase. Although they lost in overtime after a missed FG by Cody Parkey (when has he ever missed a clutch FG for Chicago?), they still went toe-to-toe with the menace and came out the other side with a renewed vigor. They finished the season on a 9-2 run, winning the NFC North for the first time in 8 years. It seems that the only way to truly remove the curse is to face it head on in battle.
Denver Broncos
This is the part of the story where you realize why Adam Gase was given so many opportunities to prove his incompetence. Gase was on the coaching staff of the Broncos for 6 years. In the final two years, he was the offensive coordinator and playcaller for the best offense in the league. Now, much debate could be had over whether that was due to Gase’s scheme or that he was the figurehead of an offense with Peyton Manning, Demaryius Thomas, Wes Welker, Eric Decker, Emmanuel Sanders, and Julius Thomas all operating at the peak of their powers. The fact remains, Gase was the coordinator when Manning set a league record with 55 touchdown passes in a single season. That was all the evidence the league needed to proclaim him an offensive mastermind for years to come.
The other thing Gase did as the OC for the Broncos was lose in the playoffs. He could not get the Broncos over the hump to a championship. In fact, his offense got entirely annihilated by the Seahawks in Super Bowl XLVIII. Despite throwing for 55 TDs in the regular season, the Broncos didn’t score until the end of the 3rd quarter of that game, with the Seahawks already up 36 points. And so the Broncos let Adam Gase go to coach the Bears offense in 2015. What else happened in 2015? Well the Denver Broncos would win the Super Bowl that year, their first without Gase infecting the building. Who did the Broncos face right in the middle of that season? You guessed it, they met Adam Gase in Chicago to face down their demons in Week 11. Beating their former coach led them to the ultimate prize at the end of the season.
LSU
Before Adam Gase even got to the NFL he was cursed. In his first job on a coaching staff, he was a graduate assistant at Louisiana State University under Nick Saban from 2000 to 2002. LSU was a good team at the time, but they weren’t elite yet. In 2003, Gase took the leap to the NFL and LSU took the leap into the top tier of college football. Without Gase on the staff, LSU instantly won the National Championship over Oklahoma. Although they had no chance to face off against Gase, Nick Saban was able top shrug off the curse and win his first national title.
Marshall High School
How far back does this curse reach? It’s almost unthinkable, but we can go all the way back to Adam Gase’s high school days as a wide receiver at Marshall High School in Michigan. Teenage Adam was no different than Adult Adam. With Gase as a senior in 1995, Marshall went 7-2 and lost in the pre-regional round of playoffs. Adam then graduated and Marshall broke free of his chains. In 1996, the high school won the state championship after a 12-1 season. They would continue winning and finish as runner-ups in 1997.
No matter where Adam Gase goes, he makes the franchise worse by proxy. He is The One Ring. You think it will give you unlimited power, but instead it corrupts from the inside and the only way to escape is to destroy it. When you finally break the curse, happiness and prosperity await. The current NY Jets are still looking for that promised After-Adam boost, but without Gase in the league, will they ever truly move on? It is possible they could end up like the Detroit Lions (who went 0-16 the first season post-Gase). There may be devil magic greater than Gase’s own that are holding them back. Only time will tell if they ever make a fully recovery.
Gold Medal – Hamilton High School Football
High school football is something else man. On September 17th, Hamilton was playing against Bishop Gorman, another powerhouse team from Las Vegas. Not much was going right for them, mustering just 90 yards of offense in the first half of the game. But Hamilton refused to give up.
With 1:10 left in the game, the Huskies trailed 24-7 and faced a 4th and 4. They elected to kick a field to cut the deficit to 14 with 65 seconds remaining. On the ensuing kickoff, #20 Cooper LeDuc recovered an onside kick from Jacob Medina. Four plays later, QB Nicco Marchiol hit Michael Masunas for a 1 yard touchdown to make the score 24-17 with 29 seconds left.
Again, the Huskies needed to recover an onside kick, and again LeDuc recovered a perfectly placed kick from Medina. Then Marchiol hit Nick Switzer for 22-yard TD, while vomiting. And with the score 24-23, instead of kicking an extra point to force OT, Hamilton goes for the win with a 2 point conversion. Marchiol carries it himself to complete the improbable comeback and win.
18 points in 70 seconds. That’s some crazy football.
Is This How You Play?
Is this how you pitch?
Is this how you throw to first?
Is this how you play rugby?
I have been obsessed with this decision by the Texans. To decline the penalty so that you can punt on 4th down, instead of running a play on 3rd down? What the hell are we doing? This is objectively NOT how you coach.
Big Ben has fallen off the proverbial cliff.
News by the Numbers
2.8% - The probability the St. Louis Cardinals would make the playoffs as of September 7th. On September 28th, the Cardinals won their 17th straight game and officially clinched a wild card spot. Let’s take a quick look at the playoff odds chart.
5 - Number of pitches needed for Eddie Rosario saw during his 4 at-bats on September 19th. In those 5 pitches, Rosario hit for the cycle. It’s the fewest pitches seen for any player that hit for the cycle in Baseball Reference’s database.
18 - Assists by Chicago Sky point guard Courtney Vandersloot during Game 1 of the WNBA Semi-Finals. That is a WNBA playoff record. She recorded just the 2nd playoff triple-double in playoff history as the Sky upset the #1 seed Connecticut Sun in the 1st match. Maybe triple double are good again?
DIMES ON DIMES for @Sloot22 🤩 Vandersloot dropped ONLY the second triple-double in #WNBAPlayoffs history and dished out 18 assists 👏 GO OFF 😤 #CountIt215 - The gap in run differential between the Seattle Mariners and the Toronto Blue Jays. Both teams are locked in a 4 way battle for just 2 AL Wildcard spots (along with the Yankees and Red Sox). Despite holding such a massive scoring advantage, the Blue Jays are tied with the Seattle and they both need help getting in. With just 2 games left, this weekend is going to be wild.
162,317 - The collective career point totals of 2021-22 Laker’s roster. This includes Lebron James’ 35,367 and Carmelo Anthony’s 27,370, the two highest active players. The New Orleans Pelicans, as a franchise, have scored 152,207 points in their entire history.
Homer Bias Restricted Area
Cole is my favorite interviewee every game, and I am ready to run through a wall for him.
Jack Hughes does not know how to cook broccoli apparently. I would absolutely watch a cooking show involving him learning to cook basic recipes.
End Of Restricted Area
Thank you for reading this week’s report. Hopefully you enjoyed my dive into the cursed idol of football. Going forward, the format my change slightly, but all the good content you are looking for will still be here.
Don’t forget to like and subscribe, defend Adam Gase in the comment section, and send this to someone who can throw a football further than Ben.
Keep Sports Fun.
Colin
Twitter - @ColinRingwood12
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