Baker Mayfield could use a history lesson.
Mayfield, who bizarrely asserted after beating the Jets that their defensive coordinator, Steve Wilks, was responsible for cutting him in Carolina when he was the Panthers’ interim coach, has gone from questionable statements to outright wrong ones.
“Coach [Todd] Bowles never mentioned it, it’s one of those things that nobody ever says anything, but you know, after being there and being the last guy to take [them] to the playoffs, I think that’s a big deal,” Mayfield said on Mark Sanchez’s new show for Fox Sports digital.
Bowles, however, was not the last person to take the Jets to the playoffs — that would be Rex Ryan — and the Jets never made the postseason during his four-year tenure as coach.
They did get close in 2015, finishing 10-6, but a Week 17 loss in Buffalo kept the Jets out of the postseason.
After that, Bowles endured three consecutive fourth-place finishes in the AFC East before getting fired.
Mayfield wasn’t done yet, though, going on to talk about Haason Reddick, who joined Tampa this season.
“Getting to know him a little bit more just throughout the offseason and whatnot, hearing all the chaos he went through,” Mayfield said, “you just know that it means more to those guys.”
While no one would doubt that Reddick wants to stick it to the Jets after his disastrous tenure in New York, there wasn’t much abnormal about how the team handled his situation.
The Jets took a hard line in negotiating with Reddick after trading for him, and the defensive end held out for the first seven weeks of the season.
His agents dropped him and, upon hiring Drew Rosenhaus, Reddick worked out a new deal with the Jets in short order.
Reddick certainly has his own view of the situation, but that sequence of events doesn’t imply that the Jets were the party at fault.
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Wilks has already put down the assertion that it was his decision to cut Mayfield, saying that as interim coach, he didn’t have much, if any, say over personnel with the Panthers.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
