Hey, when a team is hiring a guy with an average record they need a reason why he wasn't more successful. That means throwing someone under the bus. He could throw the owner/front office guys, his hand selected coaching staff or specific players. But someone or something needs to take the blame other than the guy with the average record. If not, he never gets hired.
So, Adam Gase refused to throw the owner or front office personnel or coaches or players under the bus. IMHO, that's noble, but a real gamble because it most likely means he's not getting the job. Instead, he sold a narrative that the lack of production (AKA stats) were sacrificed to gain wins. In his defense, he has a good record in close games. While we dislike QB's that are game managers, that's exactly what Adam Gase did as a play caller … managed games to keep them close. And he was good in close games.
His excuse for why he is an offensive guru and a QB whisperer for Darnold but had bad offenses is … that he was managing the games by sacrificing stats for wins. Without blaming the front office for not having enough talent or being a bad talent evaluator, he's saying he covered for the lack of talent and stretched it to get the wins he did. Honestly, this is probably the nicest way he could have treated the Miami Dolphins.
Is it a lie? Absolutely! But he's an NFL Head Coach … they lie to the media on a weekly basis. It's part of the job requirement.
We fans know it's horse droppings, but hey, for the casual fans it sounds plausible, and that's who these media circuses are really designed to reach. It's not the sort of answer that is going to withstand scrutiny, but the fans that are going to scrutinize it are already scrutinizing the roster, and his record, and his coaching staff, and are the type of people who might actually watch the draft. So nothing he says to those fans is going to make a difference. These media coach introduction pieces are primarily aimed at the other fans … the casual fans. They hear something like that and just think, 'oh OK, so it was actually a good thing because he was going for wins over stats … that's what we want, so cool, I'll give this guy a chance.'
As a Dolphins fan, I'm happy that he had enough integrity to use a phony excuse like that rather than push blame off to one of us.
Sure, he could have accepted blame … and NOT gotten another head coaching job … but nobody in the NFL is going to do that, so it's not even worth considering. Coaching is like politics … their #1 goal is to get re-elected/re-hired. From there, goal #2 is to move up the coaching ranks to Head Coach. Goal #3 is to win. Sad … but true.