http://footballoutsiders.com/fo-espn-any-given-sunday/any-given-sunday-jets-over-titans http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=3725392 The Jets dominated the previously undefeated Titans to win their fifth straight game and suddenly enter the conversation as a potential Super Bowl contender. But rather than signaling a seismic shift in the AFC, the Jets merely exposed some of the Titans' weaknesses. The Jets' short-passing attack and stout run defense took the Titans out of their element and turned the game into a blowout. The Titans' undefeated record was built on a dominant defense and a solid running game. In recent weeks, however, teams have loaded up against the run. Facing eight-man fronts, the Titans increasingly relied on resurgent quarterback Kerry Collins. His success, however, led the Titans to outthink themselves. The Jets have a much better run defense than pass defense, but their quality run defense allows them to defend the run with just seven players. Rather than challenge strength against strength, the Titans went to the air early and often with limited success. The Titans threw on 13 of their first 19 plays -- but gained only 22 yards on three completions. The Titans have a pedestrian group of receivers who struggled to get open against tight coverage and dropped a number of passes. Only after the Jets built a big lead and switched to softer coverage was Collins able to find openings. Collins completed 9 of 10 passes for 120 of his 243 yards after the Titans had fallen behind by three scores. The pass-happy tendencies and second-half deficit meant that the Titans never even attempted to stick with their running game. Their two-headed attack of Chris Johnson and LenDale White combined for only 11 carries. For a team built around its offensive line and running attack, this move away from the ground game was an enormous error. Defensively, the Titans have been among the league's best all season based on a dominant defensive line, athletic linebackers, and a couple of great secondary players in cornerback Cortland Finnegan and safety Chris Hope. The one possible weakness is their struggle with short passes to the right side, opposite Finnegan. The Titans' normal starting left cornerback is Nick Harper, who missed the game with an ankle injury. The Jets attacked his replacement, Chris Carr, mercilessly. Favre threw 16 passes to the short right side of the field, completing 11 and picking up two additional pass-interference penalties. The Titans cannot be attacked down the field: Their pass rush affords little time, and their safeties cover a great deal of ground. Favre didn't complete any passes that traveled more than 15 yards in the air. He did pick up a pass-interference penalty on Carr but also was intercepted by Finnegan. To beat the Titans, the passing attack has to be underneath. Of course, the underneath passes are the specialty of this Jets team. Favre, in spite of his gunslinger reputation, throws almost everything underneath these days. His arm strength is now used to fit balls into tight spaces rather than throw balls down the field. His precision underneath was just what the doctor ordered against Tennessee. The short passing attack led to a ball-control offense that held the football for over 40 minutes. They wore down the Titans' defense, and the Jets gained more than half their rushing yards in the fourth quarter. The Jets' domination was certainly an impressive feat, but the Titans presented a perfect opponent for a team built around ball-control offense and stout run defense. The breaking point in a matchup between these two playoff-caliber teams was whether Tennessee could run the ball, and the Titans did not even give themselves a chance. Despite the impressive win, the Jets are not the best team in the AFC. They have a good and improving offense but only an average defense. That defense is wildly inconsistent, allowing more than 30 points three times and now holding four teams under 15. It is no surprise that two of the big games came against two of the NFL's top pass offenses, San Diego and Arizona. The third was against the rejuvenated Patriots' passing attack. A bad matchup for the Jets would be a pass-first team that does not need to establish the run. Among potential AFC playoff opponents, only Denver, Indianapolis and New England pose that challenge. The Jets' defense would likely struggle against all three of those teams but play well against Baltimore; Pittsburgh; or, as Sunday proved, Tennessee. For the Titans, one really bad loss is no reason to panic. They need to get back to basics and use their running game to open up the passing game. Against eight-man fronts, they can pass with great success, but make no mistake: This is a run-first team. Sunday's game was a not-so-gentle reminder of this fact and should make the Titans better going forward.
Uninformed. The Arizona and San Diego games displayed a team that did tap into its potential. And not establishing the run almost never gets you a win. Cassel had to throw a perfect pass to tie it with 1 second left. Ty Law even said if he remembered the new rule of knocking the receiver out of bounds, he would have gone after Moss and not the ball. He forgot the new rule. One game since the Bye that the Jet have allowed a 300+ passing game for an opponent. We can beat Indy, or the Pats with what we have in the secondary. I'd like to see the Pats game played at home rather than in Gillette. The game doesn't go into overtime. I've realized that the secondary is mainly garbage time yardage. When teams are ahead, they run the ball in garbage time. When you are behind, you pass. BTW, in terms of stopping the run - the top rusher in each contest this year has been a Jet RB except for.... LT in San Diego... which the Jets were never going to win.
Average defense? What a joke. We get sacks, stop the run, and force turnovers. The games against the Pats and Cards, we got up early and they were forced to throw a lot. This is no excuse, but Sunday it looked like we stayed agressive, except for the one TD drive. I'll take our defensive over 85% of the other defenses in the NFL. Average? Yeah right.
But what he says has some ingredient of truth: as I pointed out in other thread, Jets D struggle mightily against quick, nimble WRs that can find space underneath. Our OLBs will be hard-pressed against short passing attack. That aspect of this D worries me.
I hope the Titans get far enough to try this guys ideas out. I want to see them swap the rush and pass attempts. Unfortunately I don't think Fisher is that dumb.
Can't say the person writing that piece was unfair or slanted. The Jets have been gashed by good passing teams. Oh well, they defend the run so well that other teams have to pass and pass often. Especially, given the fact that the Jets have had big leads or long drives which require the opposition to pass like no tomorrow. The Jets have a better then average defense. The way the Jets stop the run, puts them over the mean rather easily. Like it or not, the Jets cant stop spread offenses and no huddle schemes. Until they do, you are going to see articles like the above and they will not be wrong............ well maybe on semantics but not the gist of them.
I'll take our wins as Any given Sunday all the way to & after the Superbowl...they as we, are just not used to seeing our team winning a game we were not supposed to win so handily... One comment I remember from the Titans game was Simms saying the reason the Titans feared us was because 'we could run the ball'... Our run game is getting better...T.Jones looks faster than I have ever seen him and we seem to be able to move the ball between the twenties consistently...and Leon is looking more and more like... dare I say... an every down back...not like the gimmick/tricky back role occupied in the past...that 61 yard run he had would not have happened in the past...simply because he would have been used on some reverse play or screen pass not, a between the tackles runner....that poses many problems for any D or offensive coordinator... The only problem with our running game is that we cannot seem to punch it in (especially in goal line situations) improve that and we will be unstoppable... Running the ball will compensate for alot of our defeciencies...because its demoralizing to the opponent...if they cant stop it...their offense is out their thinking...damn we have to score a touchdown practically on every play...which they won't obviously then more TOP & TD... by the 4th quarter they dont even want to go back in...
Im getting pretty tired about hearing about all of these "dropped balls". After watching the game 2 times now, only 1 of those passes would have gained any decent yards..the pass to the tight end over the middle would have been about a twenty yarder. 3 of the passes that were dropped would have been for losses. They were dropped with Jet defenders reading the plays and a Titan player surrounded by Jets. Lets face it...if we have shown a weakness its the middle of the field defending the pass. IF...A BIG IF...if the Jets can come to grips with that..there are no holes. They do not get beat long..they do not get beat in the flat. He says the defense is average at best. Do the Pats have a good defense? Giving up 34 to the Jets and 28 to the Dolphins? The Colts...they have a good defense? AFC teams that have better defenses have one big problem...they cant score. So now he states that the Broncos have the passing attack that could hurt the Jets. Lets see what excuses a writer like this gives the Broncos after we put up another 20+ on offense in the first half. He is right about one thing..this will be a perfect test to our weakness...and why wouldnt any of US be surprised when this game is over that they improve in another facet of the game...because thats what this season has been...better..and better.
The antedote for quick, speedy WRs is Ty Law in their face on the line, man to man, with a safety backing him up in zone coverage. Just wear the bastard out, until it's too late for him to do any serious harm.
It occurred to me reading the section about picking on Chris Carr that Mangini is similar to the Knicks-era Van Gundy. Both want tough, physical teams and look to exploit the weakness of the other team over and over again. Reading the bit about Carr reminded me of Van Gundy clearing one side of the floor to run isolation plays for Allan Houston or Latrell Sprewell play after play after play. Let's hope Mangini doesn't latch onto Matt Cassel's foot during a brawl in the playoffs.
Too many Jet fans are in denial. This article is right on the money. We lack a good pass rush and our Lbers cannot cover, so we are very succeptable to passing attack.
linebacker cant cover who? Tight ends? Im not sure thats the problem totally. The lack of pass rush is on the money..but thats the only thing. Because of that, they have been forced to send linebackers..many times two at a time..which has made the center of the field look very bare in coverage. Hey..my point was this. In the beginning of the year we couldnt run the ball. We couldnt control the clock on offense. We had to cut a punter because he sucked and now we rarely use the punter. This team has had a habit this year of fixing problems. We will find out this week if the "weakness" that scares everyone is fixable or not. This writer makes it sound like a team playing the Jets should be smart enough to not even try to develop a running game...but expose the Jets weakness against the pass. Thats absurd..thats the talk of a novice sport fan. "Lets just pass the ball 60 times and we can beat this team". I think everyone is getting all bent out of shape over something that was done to us for about 2 minutes against the Titans...and the second half against the pats. The pats then went out and put up over 40 against the dolphins. Lets see what happens this week. My memory of this particular Jet team is that nothing right now can break them....and Im a bit of a darksider.
Bert Bell coined the phrase. History lesson coming... "Bert Bell was born De Benneville Bert Bell to a prominent Philadelphia family of significant wealth and influence on February 25, 1895. For most of his life, Bell was involved with football: the sport was in his blood. He was, indeed, a football man from wire to wire. As a schoolboy, he went from Episcopal Academy to the Delancey School to Haverford School where he captained the football, basketball and baseball teams as a senior. There was never much question where Bell was going to attend college. ?Bert will go to Penn or he?ll go to hell?, his father, Pennsylvania?s Attorney General John Bell, was fond of saying. Fulfilling his somewhat predetermined fate, Bell enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania in 1914. After a year of freshman ball and another on the ?scrub? team, he became the Quakers? Varsity Quarterback. Bell was a real firebrand and besides quarterbacking he punted, returned punts, kicked field goals, and played defense. In 1916, the cocky quarterback led Penn to the Rose Bowl. In 1918, Bell served in France with the 20th Field Hospital, a mobile unit that had been formed at Penn. He was cited by the United States and France for bravery at the mobile unit which, at times, was under constant shelling by the Germans. After the war, Bell returned home to captain the Quakers for one final season in 1919, and then remained at Penn as an assistant coach under John Heisman and Louis Young for nine years. He was credited with developing the famous ?hidden ball? play. Bell shifted to Temple University as an assistant coach for two seasons. In 1933, Bert Bell and three of his former Penn teammates bought the Frankford Yellowjackets of the NFL. Pro football was far from big- time in 1933, however, Bell thought that Philadelphia sounded more desirable than Frankford, so he moved the Yellowjackets to Philadelphia, PA and renamed them the Eagles, in honor of the symbol of Franklin D. Roosevelt?s National Recovery Act. Bell became the coach, business manager, publicist, and ticket seller, while single-handedly keeping the Eagles afloat. In 1940, Bell joined Art Rooney as part owners of the Steelers. In 1946, Bell sold his interest in the Steelers when he was named Commissioner of the NFL. Early in his ownership efforts he became an influential owner, establishing the Draft system for first year players in 1935. The first draft, held between nine men at the Ritz Carlton Hotel, co-owned by Bell, was nothing like the draft of today. Bell?s first draft selection was a halfback for the University of Chicago, Berwanger. Berwanger was reluctant to come on the team until Bell got him to agree with a higher salary. In a historic move, Bell traded Berwanger to the Chicago Bears for player Art Buss. As NFL Commissioner, he resided over the absorption of three All-American Conference Clubs into a realigned NFL in 1950. He had been hired by the owners but he stood up for the players, recognizing the formation of the NFL Players Association when others refused to. Bell would constantly help players in landing loans and off season jobs, while giving each player his home phone number and telling them to call at any time. ?He had become a benevolent dictator, a man so powerful that the magnates didn?t dare oust him because he had become, too, a shining symbol of pro football?s integrity,? wrote Arthur Daly in the New York Times in 1968. ?Besides, they had developed so intense an admiration for the man and what he had accomplished that they wanted him to keep running their show, a job he was handling with consummate skill.? Bert Bell, who coined the statement, ?On any given Sunday, any team can beat any other team?, was responsible for making the game an American pastime. He tried to get the sport on TV as much as possible, using players in commercials and billboard advertisements. Bell is also credited for inventing protective face masks. Bell stood over the NFL as the sport was beginning to make its mark on a nation. One big moment came during the 1958 NFL Championship game when the Baltimore Colts beat the New York Giants in the first overtime game in NFL history. The game was the first to be telecast nationally. Following the game, Bell stood back and watched the celebrations, knowing the sport had arrived." http://onanygivensunday.com/
many analysts are saying that the titans had "abandoned" their running game, which is what they shouldn't have done. anyone see anything wrong with this?? from what i remember, we were pretty much stuffing their running plays for short gains/losses with the exception of the 20 yarder by Johnson (we forced a fumble on his other lone run of over 5+ yards). could it have been that the reason why they neglected the run early was because their running game proved to be ineffective against our D???? as opposed to everyone saying "the titans did bad in choosing not to run the ball"
Its not absurd. Two years ago the Vikes had a run D that was off the charts so what did the Pats do? They just did nothing but pass and obliterated them. Now our pass D is better than that Vikes pass D, I'm not arguing that. I think Revis's ability to shut down the #1 WR on every team so far goes a very long way. I'm very excited about the denver game because its going to put to the test what I percieve to be our biggest weakness. If we handle this game with ease then I will admit that I am wrong... very happily I might add
