While I'll root for Leon, he was a great Jet, and suffered a terrible injury you never would wish on someone, he's not the same. He still has some burst and he still has his vision, but his cutting ability is not the same. His kick returns were pretty straightforward. Don't get me wrong his stats will probably improve over time, especially when Okung gets back for Seattle and the line starts to play a bit better, but he isn't the same player. We'll see what happens the rest of the year and what he does when his contract is up at the end of the year. We can't also label McKnight a bust yet, it's three weeks into his rookie year and he's got Greene and LT ahead of him.
He's the same dangerous KR he ever was, but he's shaky taking handoffs. You can definitely see the trepidation when he moves toward the tackle box.
Kickoffs are nothing so far. Watch his returns in that game. He has no real tough cuts. He'll do good on fairly straight forward kickoff returns, and probably have better success running back kicks than running on offense, but he still isn't the same. It's not a mind thing. I don't think his leg can take the brutal hard cuts he was known for making with his shiftiness. He could cut hard and accelerate immediately. I don't think that agility is there anymore, which affects his acceleration after a cut, then throw in possible mental issues and it's not great news. Again I'm rooting for him and would like to see him do well, it just looks unlikely that he'll ever be close to the same running back he once was.
In other news, Brad Smith averaged a lowly 37.5 yards per kick return today. I guess we should have paid Leon what ever he wanted to be a part time specail teams guy. Typical "Same ol Jets Fan" whiny bullshit. Enjoy waht we have or get the fuck out. ...Now lets have aa God Damn Snack.
Should of kept Hugh Douglas haha and not picked Roger Vick, Blair Thomas, Alex Van Dyke, Mike Nugent, Kyle Brady, Anthony Becht and others haha
That is 100% BS, if we kept him we weren't paying him MJD money, we didn't give it to him when he was halthy so why would we give it to him off a career threatening injury? We goofed big time w/ Leon, we gave him away for nothing and drafted McKnight thinking it was easy to replace him. Even if he was "just" a return man he would have been huge for us but too late to worry about that now. I wish Leon the best but all I care about is if we win and so far so good.
Exactly what I was thinking. It is not like the Jets return game is struggling. Smith is doing fine. Had a few nice runbacks last night. I liked Leon too, but damn you people can't let it go. Moves are made, some good, some bad. But for all the moves made, the Jets are 2-1 with one loss by a point. Not too bad.
Brad Smith is doing a decent job as KR man but he isn't half the KR that leon Washington is. I'm not sure where you guys get this notion that we would have had to pay Leon whatever he wanted. It's ok to admit we made a mistake, we'll survive and move on but we made a mistake.
I agree with several others that pointed out that despite the 2 TD's, Leon seems to have lost some quickness (but maybe not straightline speed). I hate that the Jets traded him for next to nothing but I totally understand why they did. It was about the economics of the cap and the fact that they have multiple key players looking for big paydays.
We could have gotten him anyway and had both guys but what exactly did Connor do to help us win these last 2 games that we wouldn't have been able to win w/o him?
Leon and his wife were already bitter... They asked for MJD money, and yeah that was off the table but, they still felt entitiled and snake bitten...... Leon needed a new start.... I wish him the best. So, far I haven't seen much in the running game and not sure we had room for purely a KR coming off Major injury.
then we wouldn't have kept him beyond this season, and that is what people are talking about -- keeping him long term, -- not just having him for this one season.
We could have if we wanted to and not for a huge deal coming off the injury, we dealt him b/c we didn't think he would recover from the injury and we were wrong. I don't want to dwell on this after another big win last night but we goofed. It happens, Tannenbaum has hit alot more often than he has missed.
