That's the biggest thing that worries me about this game. I'm sure our opponents have spent a lot of time in the offseason figuring out ways to expose Rex's defensive schemes. Looks like the Cowboys found a way to do it, but I'm hoping that we can just attribute this to an off game for the Defense.
Those of you harping on the past, this is a different era. To compare this team to the teams of the eighties is just short sighted. I too have been a fan for over 25 years. But I just don't see the correlation to the teams of the past. The teams of the past would have folded and lost this game. This isn't Joe Walton coaching the Jets, it is Rex Ryan's team. They are in almost every game, rarely blown out, even when they play bad like they did in the first half last night. It is one game, and they have already started the year better than last year. When the offense could not do shit against the Ravens and they lost.
It wasn't really that surprising that we started out so slow on offense. Remember the Jets opening game against Houston in 2009? The defense shut them out with no tape to look at, we were in the same situation with no film to study. That combined with the fact that the Jets are notoriously slow starters anyway...we had it coming.
Well, you are right in that sense that the 80's teams have nothing to do with this current team. I've been a fan for over 30 years and yes, the Joe Walton, Bruce Coslet, Kotitie etc. teams would have folded. But don't ignore some of the warning signs we saw last night. Yes, this team has alot of heart and that can go a long way ( as evidenced by last night) but we will not beat the Ravens or the Patriots with that kind of performance. I know it takes a while to build the defense Rex wants but right now two holes I see is a consistant pass rush and decent safety play. This defense really needs another 2 or 3 players before Rex can fully implement his defensive strategies.... on offense I'm shocked at how the OL misses Damian Woody. Granted he was going against DeMarcus Ware but Hunter looks to need alot of work - the ground n pound suffers....and why is it that Dustin Keller looks like a world beater for a series or two and then disappears for the rest of the game? He is not utilized enough and I would also like to see the Jets implement a double TE set with Keller and Cumberland(?)....that would be hard to defend with Holmes and Plaxico on the outside.....
This is my point. The "notoriously slow starts" is one of the things that Rex needs to address. It's a combination of Schotty's early-on conservatism and Sanchez' still rookie-like lack of timing or inability to get into a rythm early enough. It's almost like he needs to warm up more and/or engage in more drills just prior to kickoff. It needs to be addressed, but I'm not sure it's a very easy fix. For whatever reason, or combination of these reasons, we sputter through 1st quarters with consecutive repeats of impotent 3 and outs... conservative calls by Schotty because it seems like he senses that Sanchez is not yet "hot" enough and Sanchez maybe feeling Schotty's lack of confidence and between the two of them it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy as the two of them feed off of one another. It's not until we get our backs up against the wall that both of them, almost in sync, realize we need to take our chances. This will eventually lead to losing games we should have won because it almost certainly has to lead to "too little, too late." Confident offenses get cracking from the 1st down. I fear that we'll eventually continue repeating this until we bury ourselves in enough holes during some key games in the season, holes from which we can't recover and critical games that would have made the difference between being in the playoffs and being numerically eliminated because we didn't win the games we could have and should have won.
The teams of the 1980's almost always got the bad bounce or the big penalty that cost them the game. The Jet teams under Rex find ways to win.
You don't have to go back to the 80's, either. I don't think Pennington ever led the team back from more than one score with 20 minutes or less left.
I personally don't believe "history" has any place in predicting a sports team's performance. I've always gotten a kick out of TV announcers who put up a chart showing that a certain team has been beaten by another team in "12 of their last 15 matchups," going back, in some cases, decades. Ridiculous. What happened in 1988, 1990, 1993 and so on is completely irrelevent! So yeah, we can jokingly say that the Jets of old would have lost this game because Folk would have stubbed his toe and the FG would have sailed right, but the reality of last night's game is that this was not the SOJs.. and they weren't the SOJs because this was a much better TEAM EFFORT than any of those SOJ teams. This team is better coached and has better talent and played much better as a TEAM, and that's why they won last night.
The cowboy game is a loss with most coaches. The Jets were outplayed in almost every facet of the game yet they still won. as I have said here before. Get a few wins and make the playoffs. Thats the ticket to a return to the championship game and maybe we win this year. Lam
Perhaps possible solution to the problem of getting Sanchez going and into a rhythm at the first snap instead after the game is already well underway might be to adopt the old Bill Walsh approach of scripting the first ten or so plays that cater to Sanchez's strengths and which also generally have a favorable success rate. The 49's from the Walsh era typically used this approach to also get a variety of their offensive players involved at the outset of a game as opposed to, for example, our inability to get the ball to Plax until well into the 2nd half. Just a thought but I worry that these slow starts may become a permanently defining trait of our team.
I found Derrick Mason to be thoroughly unexciting last night. I have pretty low expectations for him. Amen to that.
I found myself reminiscing about the Jet-Ravens opener last year on that rainy Monday night loss, sitting there watching countless 3 and outs, 3 and outs. That one didn't end so well and I remember thinking, "If only we could have played a little less conservatively and put some points on the board in the 1st half." I like your Bill Walsh idea a lot. I'd like to see Schotty get together with Sanchez and design whatever Mark is comfortable with. Or maybe he's already done that and that's the problem. I'm afraid the "Ground and Pound" may be gone too, which will only complicate the problem. If you can't make 1st downs with the run, it puts even more pressure on Sanchez to deliver. Confidence is contageous. So is lack thereof. It's almost like Schotty doesn't have complete confidence in Sanchez's ability to execute early on and Sanchez feels that and the execution isn't there because of that. They feed on one another in a negative way until it's absolutely necessary to make something happen or you lose. Then they both find it within themselves to coordinate the confidence with the execution. Sometimes it's successful, like last night (with a little help from Romo), and sometimes it's not.
Yeah, that's a little weird. I'm sure Folk won't be turning his back on Sanchez every time it's 3rd and 17. WTF is up with that? Man up dude.
