Todd Downing’s ascension to offensive play caller was one of the big stories around the Jets last week, but this week is all about the arrival of wide receiver Davante Adams.
Downing will be charged with scheming up ways to get the ball into Adams’s hands while also making sure that players like Garrett Wilson, Breece Hall, Allen Lazard, and — assuming he remains on the team — Mike Williams are also involved in the offense. During a Thursday press conference, Downing was asked what he’ll do in order to make sure everybody is getting their share of work.
“Yeah, just tell Aaron to throw to the open guy that is the easy part,” Downing said, via a transcript from the team. “No, as a chef you would want a bunch of ingredients, you wouldn’t want to stand in a kitchen and be looking for something in the cupboards, so it is a good problem to have that we have all of these really cool ingredients. I think you have to be intentional too about making sure guys understand where they fit in the plan because then they get ownership of it and they can get excited about certain plays, or they can get excited about their role and that is the challenge for a coaching staff, right. You have all these very talented weapons, now it is figuring out how you are going to make sure that everybody feels their piece of the pie.”
Given all of the kitchen references, Downing may have been hungry during his time in front of the media and he certainly has a lot of mouths to feed now that Adams is in the offensive mix for the Jets. If Downing is able to make sure that happens, the Jets will have a better shot of rebounding from their 2-4 start.
