I would like to know what's wrong with predictability. Good running teams line up and run the ball. They block tacklers and runners run to daylight. They execute over and over again. There are 3 to 6 plays a game where you can use teams over pursuit against them but that usually comes out of a team effectively doing what everyone knows is coming and forcing the other team to compensate with over pursuit.
OMG, glad I wasnt the only one who noticed Hunter. I'm screaming at the screen "yeah laugh it up you fuck, your getting owned" LT is a good 3rd down back who shouldnt be asked to carry the load unless injuries happen. still servicable for 10-12 carries though.nothing more nothing less. me and you usually are on the same page, but i couldnt disagree more here. Greene has never been used the way hes built to be used simply cause of the offense. Greene needs 16-20 carries a game to be effective. not to mention actual run blocking. The OL simply isnt doing its job in either the run or passing game, as evidenced by dogpiles in the run gaps at the LOS and Sanchez running for his life. Were missing Edwards run blocking thats for sure. And yes, we played like we should have and beat a inferior team in a manner we should have. Sanchez performance was the usual flashes of greatness, mixed with the unnecessary turnovers. If this was an elite team we were playing it wouldve looked like another Dallas heart attack.
Through 2 weeks. I'll see if I can keep a running total throughout the season. If the Jets can manage to have a top 10 offense in all three categories, they'd probably run away with the AFC. Unfortunately, we're nowhere near there as of now. Total Offense: 21 - 29.5 pt/g - 321.5 yd/g Passing Offense: 13 - 248.5 yd/g - 4 TD Rushing Offense: 28 - 73.0 yd/g - 1 TD
These are all that I care: Scoring: 29.5/7th Pts given up: 13.5/3rd Points differential: 16/4th Turnover: +3/6th ------------------------------------ I am a bit concerned over the lack of ground game, but at least stat-wise, I am more than content. (Jacksonville win skewed the stats a bit, but if Jets can maintain +2 TD differential on average, that's more than good enough to me.) If the Jets Offense can stay within top 10 in terms of scoring, they do have a legitimate shot this year.
I know everyone wants Sanchez throwing the ball deep more, but I don't understand why. Granted, they're not wobbly Pennington passes, but they're also nowhere in the league of a Manning or Rogers. When you throw deep, you risk interceptions unless your QB is both accurate and very strong on them. Sanchez is neither. It really seems that no one wants to take a realistic look at Sanchez. I like the guy, don't get me wrong, but he's not an elite QB. He may never be. That said, I think we can win with him, but don't expect passes going for more than 20 until he learns how to fool defenses. Part of the run game's vanilla flavor is the lack of production. Everyone cries when Schotty runs gadget plays, but when he tries to get his team to execute simple running plays they fall flat and everyone complains. You have to make up your mind. Either we run gadget plays to make defenses respect us, or we run vanilla plays. Either way, the actual level of execution needs to be better. No one ever blames Greene. Sorry, but he's not that good. He's shown a couple of flashes, and been disappointing otherwise. Isn't that the same thing said about Schottenheimer? Plus, the line is awful right now. Between the turnover and loss of Mangold, plus the loss of Edwards, the blocking for the run game just isn't there. The first reason is obviously that you can't sell it when your RBs aren't getting the job done on the ground. No one is going to be fooled by PA until our running backs get some decent yards every carry. Beyond that, Sanchez needs time. Wasting even the fraction of a second it takes to sell the fake allows a blitzing LB another step towards planting him in the grass. You (as well as others) keep saying the Jets didn't adapt to the coverage. Dustin Keller had a pretty good day. He's a key weapon in our offense. He was open and received the bulk of the work. That's adapting to coverage. If short passes to Keller for first downs get us into the red zone, is that better or worse than long passes to Holmes getting us into the red zone? The fact is, as long as we're getting there, we're fine. Not to mention Sanchez has by far the best rapport with Keller in terms of his receiving corps.
I have been watching the Jax game all morning focusing on the run game. I plan on making a more in depth post but I will say it is certainly a myth that the jets were just running dives all game. Greene not being very good also looks to false. Every time the line has decent blocking he is going for 5 to 10 yards. That dancing I have seen complaining about? He is being forced to completely change directions and just attempt to get back to the line a lot. A lot of the blocking schemes on these plays seem pretty complicated to me. I saw a play where hunter ignored an end right in front of him because it appeared Keller was assigned to come crashing down on him and let the back get to the outside, the play gets blown up the second Keller doesn't crash down fast enough. I think people might actually be hoping for a more vanilla running game than we had at Jax because most of these bad plays are one block away from being nice gains.
With all due respect, play action was there all along - hell, the first TD pass came along play action. Also, not attacking the middle of the field is somewhat false in that Sanchez did hit Keller a few times off play action pass on either crossing route or (the dreaded) post pattern. They are all there - just waiting to be seen. ------------------------------------------------------------------- I am glad that Sanchez improved his accuracy a lot this season. Just I hope two things: 1. I hope he (and the offense for that matter) learns to dink and dunk. Taking shots downfield is not the only option when it comes to passing. 2. No more bone-headed interceptions (that are caused by forcing the ball when there is NOTHING there.)
I feel that, the lack of coordination along the OL (and hence the lack of production on the ground) is more or less the artifact of not having full off-season. Once the kinks are ironed out, the running game will come back strong - or I hope.
I watches the first td pass a few times earlier. How beautiful was it to see 4 guys bite on that fake? 3 linebackers and a safety all take at least two steps forward. The safety biting causes the other safety to get turned around in coverage making the pass to Holmes a lot less tight then it would have been
If you never test the deep middle it's almost like giving the defense an extra defensive back. Safeties can gamble more often and do and linebackers dropped in coverage become more valuable because more passes enter the areas they have responsibility for. The great Tampa Bay pass defenses of the early 2000's were great partly because Derrick Brooks could get deep in coverage in the middle of the field. The ability of the Buc's Cover-2 to always have the deep middle covered made them really hard to pass against and the ability of Brooks to get into that area of the field and defend was a big part of that. The Jet's offensive scheme doesn't force the opponent to cover deep middle at all. Effectively they're turning every linebacker who drops into coverage on passing downs into Derrick Brooks because they only throw at areas in the middle of the field that a decent linebacker can cover. They need to stretch the field in the middle or they give the opposing defenses the ability to have more people in effective coverage than they should have on each play.
http://www.nfl.com/videos/new-york-jets/09000d5d82228ddf/QB-Sanchez-to-WR-Burress-26-yd-pass That was, from the first week as well.
That was a 20 yard pass in the air. It made sense given the Jets were on the 7 and they need a quick hitter but it definitely was not a deep pass over the middle. A deep pass over the middle goes 40 yards in the air and burns the hell out of a safety who cheated up or outside. Note that both of the Cowboys middle backers blitzed on that play. If one of them had dropped in coverage he'd have been sitting 5 yards underneath that pass when it landed.
I'll be honest, I'm not paying a ton of attention to the actual blocking. I've been focusing on Greene, so you may well be right. Trust me, I want Greene to be great. After his playoff performance a couple of years ago I packed Jones' bags for him. I wouldn't be at all shocked if some better blocking helped. Lord knows the blocking has a long way to go right now. I think the short passes to Keller and LT are the dink and dunk. No one is ever in favor of those because they aren't flashy, but they're effective, especially with a guy like Keller who is a ridiculous mismatch on practically anyone covering him. This is fair. Trust me, I'm not all "Rah rah Schotty!" I think he gets too cute and sometimes doesn't call the obvious simply because it's obvious. I think he plays games with our weapons more than letting our weapons play the game. I definitely don't think he's the best offensive coordinator in the NFL, but I do think he has a ridiculously bad reputation on this board (and in general Jets fandom). I think that if the pieces of the offense get into a position where everyone is executing the plays with the sort of precision we see from a team further north, Schotty is going to make a large number of our offensive players Pro Bowlers.
By dink-and-dunk, what I wanted to emphasize was, since Jets WRs (Holmes and Plax - and to some degree Keller) are all capable of being downfield threats, it would make sense to use them as a decoy and go underneath with either Mason or Tomlinson. Not once or twice, but good 7-8 times a game, if not more. Once the defense realize it really hurts like shit, and start covering the shallow field, that in turn will open up for Holmes and (more importantly) Plax down field.
What this is really saying though is that if Schotty had Tom Brady the Jets offense would be great. Think about it. An offensive coordinator who needs one of the greatest QB's in history for his offense to stand out isn't really all that good in my opinion. The Jets have Mark Sanchez, who has clearly demonstrated at this point that he can score points in a hurry when he needs to. They have Brian Schottenheimer whose offenses get shut down mysteriously a few times each year and cause the Jets to lose games (10-9 Ravens and 9-0 Packers last year as an example, 16-13 Bills and 10-7 Falcons in 2009, 19-10 Patriots and 16-13 Raiders with healthy Favre in 2008, 2007 was a trainwreck so no point in looking at that but 41-0 Jaguars, 20-13 Browns, 10-0 Bears and 31-13 Bills in 2006.) In low scoring games (29 points or less total scoring) the Jets are 6-12 since 2006. These are the games where a little bit of effective offense wins you the game. More often than not the Jets can't put together that effective bit of offense to win. This has been true with Mark Sanchez (2-5), Brett Favre (0-3) and Chad Pennington (2-3). Kellen Clemens was (2-1) in low scoring games but the opposition in those wins were a combined 5-22 coming in to those games. Basically if the game is going to be a low scoring affair Brian Schottenheimer will find a way to lose it (Jets rush for 318 yards but lose 16-13 to the bills on Sanchez 5 Int's, Jet's rush for 242 yards but lose 16-13 to the Raiders on Favre's 2 Int's) even if it seems impossible to do so.
Just watched the replay of Sanchez's INT to Mathis, where the Jets had 3 receivers within 20 yards of one another. Sanchez did look off to Keller on the hitch, but he then threw to Mathis, who let Mason go up the sideline and moved over to Holmes. Mason was open, but pre-snap he was covered by Mathis. Its was another zone coverage that beat Sanchez and got the INT. But why is this play even called when it calls for 3 WRs to be from the far hash to the sideline to be that close? They have to scrap that play from the book, because there were FIVE Jaguar defenders in the area. How is that smart? The play is on Sanchez and Schotty. Sanchez needs to be able to see Mason all alone, even though I think the pressure that made him step up and misread the zone. But for Schotty to design a play that puts 3 WRs in the same spot is stupid. It makes it so easy for a defense to cover 80% of your weapons. And no one was over the middle of the field to clear anyone out on that play either. It was 3rd and 15 and no one is over the middle of the field? A checkdown? Nothing? Schotty does this shit and that's why he won't get my full respect. The 1st quarter was perfect. But after Mangold went down, everything changed. Nick is really going to be missed next week. I really hope he comes back for Baltimore.
Yeah, this is what I'm talking about. The first time I saw this happen was in Sanchez 4th game when he threw the pick to Darren Sharper against the Saints. I've seen similar now about a dozen times over his career. You're right that he needs to be smarter about where he puts the ball on that side of the field but the Jets offensive staff needs to get its head out of the hole in the ground and start looking at why Sanchez fails when he does. Designing plays where he's going to have to put the ball up in heavy traffic on the left side is just insane. That's like trying to fail.
If they were able to get Mason completely wide open wasn't the play successful and it was Sanchez's error that caused the interception, and not the play design?
Alio, this is all BS. Put him in the shotgun, Put 4 targets out, get the ball gone in three seconds which is a los read (Off Coverage) Not sayng he can be Brady, yet, but THAT is what the NFL is evolving into. REX gets that. He spends $$$ on Corners not Pass Rushing linemen. How do you negate Pass Rushing linemen, by getting rid of the got dang ball. If OUR Offense evolved to the Point that our Defense has evolved to, we'd never lose a game.
