Report: Josh Gordon’s Ex-Coach Explains Why Team Moved On

With six games under his belt, Josh Gordon had been nothing but a success for the New England Patriots ever since they were able to acquire him in a deal with the Cleveland Browns.

Of course, Gordon did come to Foxboro with some warning labels attached to him given his troubled past with substance abuse, but the wideout has been able to display his talent with little to know speed bumps along the way. Through those six games, Gordon has caught on nicely within New England’s offense and has quickly sparked up a rapport with Tom Brady.

That fast chemistry has resulted in Gordon catching 22 of his 38 targets for 396 yards and two touchdowns during this brief tenure in New England. The veteran is also coming off his best outing of the season on Sunday night against the Packers where he caught five passes for 130 yards and a touchdown.

One person who isn’t totally surprised by Gordon thriving with the Patriots is his former Browns coach in Hue Jackson, who said on FS1’s Undisputed on Wednesday that he knew a change of scenery would be a massive help for Gordon.

“I mean we know what type of talent Josh Gordon is,” Jackson said. “Sometimes I think players need different sceneries in order to be all that they can be. Everything that this young man had dealt with was in Cleveland. That’s all he knew. I think he’s in a better place for him professionally, emotionally, mentally and I think you are starting to see the real Josh Gordon and I wish him well.”

Of course, given that talent that Gordon possesses, Jackson did admit it was difficult to finally come to the decision to move on from him.

“We made a decision as an organization just to move forward,” he said.

Jackson continued: “Yes, it was hard. But I think we as an organization made a decision that we felt that anything that we thought was going to stop us or hinder us from being the best version of an organization, a football team that we can be, that we would move forward. And that’s what we did.”

Jackson is also of the mind that moving on from talent like Gordon wasn’t the best move to help foster top overall pick in quarterback Baker Mayfield, but it was a move they needed to make.

“Absolutely,” he said. “Anytime you lose some of the more talented players on your team, when you’re playing, is hard. Especially when you’re a rookie player. Obviously, Jarvis Landry is doing some good things for him. Jarvis is a tremendous competitor and player, but at the same time you want to make sure your quarterback has all the options that he can have.

“Did it hurt a little bit? I’m sure it did. But Baker is such a competitor. He’s going to look to find a way to overcome it and I think he’s learning. In the National Football League, you do need all the guys at your disposal in order to have success.”