by Glenn Naughton (@acefan23)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Almost immediately after word got out regarding the\u00a0Jets decision to make Todd Bowles their new Head Coach, the name Chan Gailey began to surface as Bowles’ top choice to run his offense.\u00a0 Jets fans familiar with Gailey’s work as a Head Coach in Buffalo with the Bills from 2010-2012 let out a collective groan.\u00a0 Under Gailey, the Bills posted a 16-32 record\u00a0in three seasons\u00a0before the\u00a0Bills sent him packing.\u00a0 While things didn’t work out for Gailey in Buffalo, or in Dallas where he coached the Cowboys to a pedestrian 18-14 mark in 1998-1999, he’s done some rather remarkable things for his offenses and the young quarterbacks he’s had the opportunity to work with.<\/p>\n
Some of Gailey’s best work came as an offensive coordinator for the Pittsburgh Steelers during the 1996 and 1997 seasons.\u00a0 In those two years, Gailey’s teams were ranked 11th and 7th respectively in points scored. Even more impressive is the fact that the Steelers posted those numbers with some fairly undesirable options at the quarterback position.<\/p>\n
Their 1996 team was saddled with journeyman Mike Tomczak, a career back-up who had\u00a0started more than ten games just once,\u00a0when he\u00a0got the nod\u00a011 times\u00a0for the Bears in 1989.\u00a0 Tomczak threw for 2,058 yards with 16 touchdowns and 16 interceptions that season. His completion percentage was just 51% as he attempted a career-high 306 passes in the windy city.\u00a0\u00a0With Gailey in Pittsburgh in ’96, his TD\/INT numbers in\u00a0fifteen starts were in the same ballpark (15 \/17)\u00a0but he\u00a0threw\u00a0just one more interception than he did in ’89 despite attempting 95 more passes.\u00a0 Far from prolific production, but credit Gailey for guiding the offense\u00a0of a team that would go on to finish 10-6 despite having a quarterback who wouldn’t see significant playing time again until 1999.\u00a0 In relief of Kordell Stewart in week 10 and starting\u00a0by week 11, the Steelers stumbled to a 1-5 finish with Tomczak under center.<\/p>\n
During Gailey’s second season in Pittsburgh he was tasked with developing\u00a0a project quarterback in\u00a0Kordell Stewart.\u00a0 A second round pick out of the university of Colorado, there was plenty of doubt surrounding Stewart’s ability to succeed at the NFL.\u00a0 Many viewed Stewart as a “gimmick” on offense when he earned the nickname “slash” for playing quarterback, running back, and wide receiver early on in his career.\u00a0 With the Gailey\/Steward combo however, the Steelers finished 6th in the NFL in total yards and 7th in points scored.\u00a0 It was after that season that Gailey would move on to become head coach of the Dallas Cowboys with the Steelers finishing the season with an 11-5 record.\u00a0 Following\u00a0Gailey’s departure, Stewart would never again throw 20 touchdowns as he did in 1997\u00a0(21) and eclipsed the 3,000 yard mark just once more in 2001 after topping that mark in his first season as a starter under Gailey.\u00a0 So, as with Tomczak, the Steelers managed to post double-digit wins with\u00a0a\u00a0quarterback\u00a0who would never again\u00a0perform at the level he had under Gailey.\u00a0 It was undoubtedly that performance that landed Gailey the head coaching job in Dallas as the Cowboys offense struggled while Gailey was working his magic with Stewart in Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n
Armed with Hall of Fame quarterback Troy Aikman during the 1997 season, the Dallas Cowboys finished an embarrassing 22nd in scoring\u00a0 in the NFL.\u00a0\u00a0 Gailey’s addition was supposed to bring the\u00a0Dallas offense back to life and he\u00a0delivered.\u00a0 Despite losing Aikman for five games in 1998, Gailey’s Cowboys vaulted from 22nd\u00a0in scoring to a top-10 finish when the ranked\u00a09th in points scored\u00a0.\u00a0 Even when Aikman was lost to injury for five games Gailey kept the Cowboys afloat with second-string QB Jason Garrett taking over.\u00a0 During that span the Cowboys went 3-2 en route to flipping their 6-10 record from the previous season, to a division winning 10-6 under Gailey.\u00a0 In his second and final season in Dallas, Gailey saw his offense slip slightly from 9th in scoring, to 11th.\u00a0 With Aikman still battling injuries, an eight-win season wasn’t enough to save Gailey from being let go by owner Jerry Jones.\u00a0 Once again however, Gailey made the best of a bad situation.\u00a0 A division title and a high-octane offense despite a banged up, aging quarterback and a career back-up being called on to start seven games during his two season stint with the Cowboys.<\/p>\n
From Dallas it was on to Miami where Gailey would be back to calling plays with another physically limited quarterback in Jay Fiedler.\u00a0 Never somebody who struck fear in his opponents, Fiedler would join Tomczak and Stewart as quarterbacks who would do\u00a0their best work under Gailey.\u00a0 The biggest difference this time around for Gailey was going to be the lack of\u00a0an established running back.\u00a0 In Pittsburgh and Dallas he featured a couple of future Hall of Famers in\u00a0Jerome Bettis and Emmitt Smith.\u00a0 With the Dolphins, Gailey would be pairing Fiedler with a virtual unknown in Lamar Smith.\u00a0 Smith was\u00a0a solid runner\u00a0who\u00a0 had never been a featured back or\u00a0eclipsed the 1,000 yard mark.\u00a0 He had also reached the end zone just 11 times in his first six NFL seasons.\u00a0 Under Gailey, that all changed in a hurry.\u00a0The coordinator relied heavily on Smith due to Fiedler’s limitations and lack\u00a0of experience.\u00a0 The\u00a0 result for Smith were career highs in\u00a0carries (309), yards (1,139) and touchdowns\u00a0(14).<\/p>\n
As far as Fiedler’s growth under Gailey, with a full season under his belt as a starter in 2000, he was turned loose by the veteran coordinator.\u00a0 After managing just 14 touchdowns and 14 interceptions in year one with Gailey, Fiedler had a career year of his own.\u00a0\u00a0The QB’s\u00a0interception total was high (19) but he also managed 20 touchdowns, completed over 60% of his passes\u00a0and threw for 3,290 yards.\u00a0 Fiedler would go on to play four more seasons following Gailey’s departure for Georgia Tech, but he would never come close to matching his production from the 2001 season.<\/p>\n
After spending six seasons in the college ranks, Gailey was called back to NFL action when former New York Jets coach Herm Edwards asked him to run his offense for him\u00a0in Kansas City.\u00a0 The season was a disaster as the Chiefs limped to a 2-14 finish under Edwards, and Gailey’s offense ranked 26th in scoring.\u00a0 Despite the final record and poor ranking,\u00a0Gailey’s work with a young quarterback may have been one of\u00a0\u00a0his most impressive efforts up to that point.<\/p>\n
For the majority of the 2008 season it was up to Gailey to find ways to score with quarterback Tyler Thigpen running the offense.\u00a0 Prior to that season the second-year\u00a07th round pick had thrown\u00a0a total of six passes in the NFL.\u00a0\u00a0Thigpen would end up starting 11 games for the Chiefs that season and Gailey somehow managed to get the youngster to\u00a0throw 18 TD’s to just 11 interceptions.\u00a0 Since that season under Gailey, Thigpen has remained a back-up, staring only one contest for the Dolphins in 2010.<\/p>\n
For the Jets, a team that has spent the past\u00a0six seasons watching first and second round quarterbacks Mark Sanchez and Geno Smith turn the ball over a staggering 145 times while throwing just 93 touchdowns, the thought of an inexperienced seventh round pick\u00a0producing more touchdowns than\u00a0interceptions is\u00a0an alien\u00a0concept.<\/p>\n
Proving he could get results from even the most unlikely candidates at quarterback, the Buffalo Bills gave Gailey his next shot\u00a0as a Head Coach when they hired him following the 2009 season.\u00a0\u00a0Gailey once again inherited a seventh round pick and this time it was\u00a0Harvard product Ryan Fitzpatrick.\u00a0 Fitzpatrick, another journeyman, was on his third team in six seasons after the Rams chose him with the 250th overall pick in the 2005 draft.\u00a0When Gailey arrived in Buffalo he had a total of 23 NFL starts with a career high of 12 with the Bengals two years earlier.\u00a0\u00a0Over that span\u00a0Fitzpatrick completed 57% of his passes while throwing 21 touchdowns\u00a0and 27 interceptions.\u00a0 Another project for Gailey to add to the list, and while the Bills struggled to win games with one of the worst defenses in the NFL, he once again managed to get\u00a0his\u00a0quarterback to play at a\u00a0level he hadn’t approached\u00a0up to that point.<\/p>\n
In three seasons under Gailey, Fitzpatrick completed 60% of his passes with 71 touchdowns and 54 interceptions.\u00a0 An overall record of 16-32\u00a0in Buffalo led to Gailey’s dismissal.\u00a0\u00a0Until Bowles called, Gailey seemed to have faded away.\u00a0 He\u00a0didn’t coach anywhere in 2013\u00a0or 2014.\u00a0 Because of his record as a head coach, some fans and media viewed his hiring as a bad choice.\u00a0 Upon learning Gailey was the likely choice to run the Jets offense ESPN.com’s Rich Cimini said the choice wasn’t “inspiring<\/a>” but seems to have come around\u00a0<\/a>since then.<\/p>\n Gailey has spent a good portion of his career changing public opinion of the quarterbacks he’s worked with.\u00a0 Now in New York, he gets an opportunity to change public opinion of himself.\u00a0 Gailey isn’t just somebody who’s been fired from two coaching jobs, but a coach who has gotten the most out of what he’s had.\u00a0 With the Jets,\u00a0he’ll likely have another challenge on his hands with the struggling Geno Smith or whoever else is brought in.\u00a0 Regardless, Jets fans should be happy in knowing that if anyone can get their quarterback to finally resemble an NFL offense, Gailey is that man.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Glenn Naughton (@acefan23) Almost immediately after word got out regarding the\u00a0Jets decision to make Todd Bowles their new Head Coach, the name Chan Gailey began to surface as Bowles’ top choice to run his offense.\u00a0 Jets fans familiar with Gailey’s work as a Head Coach in Buffalo with the Bills from 2010-2012 let […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":21016,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,1337],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-27586","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-featured-editorials","8":"category-home-slider"},"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/helmet.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peLffi-7aW","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27586"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27590,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27586\/revisions\/27590"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}