Now that he’s been given his stay of professional execution — at least for the 2017 season — Todd Bowles has a lot to check off on his to-do list for the New Year.
At the top of Bowles’ list is cleaning up his messy kitchen, reeling in his lost locker room, identifying some true leaders and creating an environment of unity the team severely lacked this year.
As the Jets cleared out their lockers Monday after a sixth consecutive season without a playoff berth, one underlying theme bubbled to the surface as a significant contributor to their bitterly disappointing, underachieving 5-11 finish: a locker room divided and without enough positive chemistry.
After the Jets’ 30-10 season-finale win over the Bills on Sunday, cornerback Darrelle Revis spoke of locker-room dissension casting a “dark cloud’’ over the team this year.
Locker-room chemistry and team leadership is a tricky thing when it comes to how much involvement a head coach can have in cultivating it. The best chemistry on successful teams comes organically. These Jets never had it, and it cost them.
“It falls on me and it falls on them,’’ Bowles said Monday when asked about locker-room unity. “I’ve got to be accountable for them, and they’ve got to be accountable for each other. I was on a Super Bowl team, and we argued in the locker room every day, even if we won a game 45-0. It’s a matter of squashing it and leaving it where it is, and that’s a sign of maturity.’’
Asked if he believes his players could have done a better job of squashing issues instead of letting them linger, Bowles said, “I do.’’
On Monday, as some players reflected on the season, the lack of locker-room harmony clearly was an issue that never got resolved.
“When you see bad things going on you almost lose your purpose,’’ receiver Quincy Enunwa said. “When the team doesn’t feel like a team then you start doing it for yourself. The losing didn’t help, but it was a mindset that just kind of spread, and it wasn’t good.
“I think it can be fixed,’’ Enunwa went on. “We know what we need to do. I think looking at it now, we know, Coach Bowles knows. There are going to be a lot of changes, and I think they’re going to be for the better.’’
Asked if Bowles could have done a better job curbing in-house player dissension, Enunwa said: “I applaud Coach Bowles’ effort. He did what he was supposed to do. He did what he needed to do. But we have to also police the locker room. It’s about us policing ourselves as well.’’
Veteran receiver Brandon Marshall was the one player who tried to be a vocal leader, but he also was at the center of a few storms, clashing with defensive tackle Sheldon Richardson dating back to a locker-room argument they had in Kansas City in Week 3. It was their postgame spat that first shed light on a locker-room issue, and it lingered for the rest of the season.
Clearly, Richardson and some other players rolled their eyes at the leadership style Marshall was trying to sell — particularly with Marshall in the midst of his worst production in his 10 years as a starter (50 fewer catches, 11 fewer TDs and 714 fewer yards than last season).
“When you lose, everything’s challenged,’’ Marshall said. “It’s personal. In this environment, there are a lot of things tested. We were tested this year. Relationships were tested. There was a lot of tension.’’
Marshall called the locker-room strife something that “comes with only winning five games and having the type of year we had.’’
“Everyone’s digging and searching for something to point the finger at,’’ he said. “The strong teams, the good locker rooms, are the ones that can pick themselves up from it. What matters is what we do move forward and how we pick up the pieces.’’
There are a lot of pieces to pick up between now and next season with a Jets roster that resembles a game of “52 card pickup’’ — a yard sale of scattered items. And it’s the job of Bowles and general manager Mike Maccagnan to decide what’s worth saving and what to discard.
Linebacker Lorenzo Mauldin said he sensed a different feel from this year’s team than last year’s group, which went 10-6.
“Last year, we went through a lull and pulled ourselves out of it,’’ Mauldin said. “After the first few games this year, I felt like, ‘Oh, we’ll come out of it.’ But it was like we didn’t have the same spark as we did last year. We just didn’t give enough. We didn’t fight like we did last year.’’
Except with one another.