AFC East: Adam Gase came to Jets to beat the Patriots, says Mosley

Jets head coach Adam Gase came to New York with the goal in mind to knock the New England Patriots off the AFC East throne, according to C.J. Mosley.

If newly-acquired free agent linebacker C.J. Mosley is to be believed, the 19th head coach in New York Jets team history came to Gotham City with one primary goal in mind: knock off the New England Patriots. That’s exactly what Adam Gase intends to do this upcoming season, according to Mosley.

“He’s going for that one team that’s been winning every single year in the division,” Mosley told the New York Daily News on Wednesday. “He said that’s one of the main reasons he came here. We all believe that. And the guys that are the new additions to the team … we’re pretty much here for the same reason. We know what team’s been up top for a long time. We feel we have the tools, the players and the game-plan to get that done.”

You’ll forgive Patriots fans for yawning and claiming they’ve heard this all before.

Indeed, it’s almost an annual rite of passage – a rite of spring, even – that some new hotshot coach comes into the AFC East claiming he’ll be the one to finally unseat the champions in the division. Rex Ryan immediately comes to mind as one of the brashest examples of this, a coach who bounced from the New York Jets to the Buffalo Bills but kept one singular fire burning at the forefront of his mind: beat Bill Belichick and the Patriots.

Ryan was fired from both organizations largely because he failed to do just that. And now Gase is following in his exact same footsteps: he flamed out in Miami with the Dolphins, and now he comes to the New York Jets hoping for a second chance to beat the topdog in the East.

"“(Gase) came here to win,” said Mosley. “At the end of the day, history shows who we have to beat to get to that top spot. Not overlooking anybody else in the division definitely or anybody else on our schedule, but we know if you want to get to where we got to be, we know what chair we got to knock off.”"

Gase, Mosley, and the rest of Gang Green will need to play some of their best football in 2019 if they hope to usurp the crown. The Patriots have won 15 of the past 16 AFC East championships, in addition to winning three of the past five Super Bowls. Clearly, the road to NFL success runs through Foxborough… particularly for the trio of unlucky squads that share the same division with Belichick and Tom Brady.

As head coach of the Dolphins, Gase compiled a 23-25 record. He did lead Miami to second-place finishes within the division in two of his three years at the helm, and one playoff appearance in his first year. He joins a significantly more talented team in New York than the one he had in South Beach; a team that has a promising second-year quarterback in Sam Darnold, shiny new free agent additions like Mosley and Le’Veon Bell, and established stars like Leonard Williams and Jamal Adams.

Now it’s just a question of whether he can mold all the pieces together and instill the winning mentality that’s needed to conquer the Patriots.