Time for a little heresy. By nature, I'm a darksider. 40+ years of watching this team buttfuck itself will do that to a person. There are things I think need to be changed at the core of this franchise. To list them, I'm gonna lead off with: 1. Abandon the WCO and go with a more downfield attack In its time, the WCO was a lethal system that when implement correctly, produced huge gains and put a lot of points on the board in a short amount of time. The Chargers and Air Coryell planted it. Joe Montana/Steve Young/Jerry Rice/Terrell Owens engineered it. Mike Martz and the "Greatest show on Turf" perfected it. Kudos to those pioneers. That was then, this is now. The rules on defense have changed to favor points on the board over defense-centric games. Blame whomever you want but it is what it is . The league wants high scoring games and parity. So be it. I see the Jets depending on YAC's and they always run their Wr's short of the 1st down. I don't understand that and I hate it. If I see one more f'n slant that is either incomplete, gets jumped and humped by a LB, or is stopped short of the 1st down, I'm gonna do something very bad to my TV. God help the Cat or the wife if either comes in the room. With Cro and Hill and Kerley, throw the f'n ball downfield. Even if it gets picked, its still as good as a punt anyway. Cro has damn good speed and good hands for a CB. Amazingly, he might be right saying he's the second best Wr on the team. At worst, he's behind Kerley and Keller only. Fck Schilens as he's useless and a waste of roster space and money. The Oline might stand a chance IF Sparano stops being so predictable with the 1st down runs up the middle. Hell, we used to crucify Hackett for the predictable 3rd down flanker screen but really, wouldn't you like to see one these days to Kerley? 2. Abandon the Ground and Pound and go with more balance/less predictability. Hey Rex, we don't have a Mendenhal. We don't have a Arian Foster. Hell, we don't even have a Bradshaw. What we do have is Shonne Greene who is perfect in a relief role but not so great as a feature back. When Thomas Jones was here, Green would finish games without so much as breaking a sweat. Nowadays, we're lucky if Shonne doen't break his neck with all the pounding he's taking for his measley 2yds or so. Fanaca is gone. Woody is gone. Our strength is NOT our run blocking. Sadly, its not our pass blocking either but we're probably a bit better at the second than the first. The reality is, you can't Ground and Pound w/o the people and the system to do it. The fix? Use the pass to set up the run and not the other way around. Yeah, it puts more pressure on Sanchez but for what he's getting paid, let him earn it by responding and succeeding. If he can't hack it, move on to someone else and don't look back. 3. Tony Sparano's system IS NOT WORKING. MAKE CHANGES! Watching the last several games, it looked like every one of our opponents had a copy of our playbook. It was spooky just how prepared our opponents were to stop our offense. Throw out the Buffalo and Indy games and you're left with utter destruction of the Sparano offense. From what I remember last year, his system wasn't all that when he with the Dolphins either. Their fans warned us during the offseason just like we warned Chief Fans when they "stole" Herm from us. Evidently they know of what they speak. The fix? Think outside the box Tony. I know that Rex has barely a clue of what a modern, NFL offense should look like so it's your time to shine. At the rate you're going, you'll be out of a job in the very near future unless your boss somehow believes that this offense is a work in progress and needs several more seasons to jell. You'll both be gone by then. In closing, I saw a team rise to two consecutive AFCCG games, then go on a 3 year slide downwards. Yeah, I'm writing off this season because I've seen this movie before and I know how it ends. I see a team trying to convince itself that it's only a player or two away from being serious contenders. As long as they can keep selling that fairytale to Woody its all good. That's not the reality as this team's issues go far beyond one position. The problems with this team are systemic and philosphical. They're out of touch with the rest of the league and paying the price for it this year and most likely next. If 2012 isn't a wakeup call for the New York Jets, then they're doomed to be forever poor to mediocre with an occasional trip to above average. From Woody on down to Rex, this team needs to look at itself relative to its peers and honestly asses what it is they're not doing. Should they not do this, then they deserve all the empty seats they get.
I know it is counterintuitive for a Sanchez doubter like myself to say so, but a vertical attack needs to be a bigger part of the O. The present approach of running on first down and not attacking the D downfield is not working. Sanchez is also poor at the kind of short passes that the WCO is based on. Kerley and Hill can get downfield. Attack the D. I agree.
Lots of good point by the op. However, Don Coryell did not have anything to do with the "west coast" offense Bill Walsh had so much success with, and is what is now considered the "west coast" offense. Walsh really started developing the quick pass offense when he was in Cincinnatti with the Bengals and had Virgil carter at QB, because he didn't have a great downfield arm. He kept using it with Ken Anderson. Though he spent one season in San Diego he was under Tommy Prothro and not Coryell. He used it when he went to Stanford and then perfected it in San Francisco. Don Coryell's "Air Coryell" was a downfield passing game using strong armed QBs like Jim Hart in St. Louis and Dan Fouts in San Diego.
Thanks for pointing that out. I had always thought of Air Coryell as the forerunner of the WCO but on closer examination, you are indeed correct.
I hope for fuck's sake this team doesn't think its a star (either sign/trade for veteran or make a big move for a rookie in the draft) away from contention. The reality is this team needs to be gutted and rebuilt. The offensive line needs to be rebuilt, we need an impact RB, probably a QB, at least one more WR ( although I do like Hill and Kerley), TE if Keller commands too much $...and that's just offense. On defense need one possibly two safeties depending on what happens with Landry and a couple LBers. We do have young talent in the d-line which will help the defense tremendously going forward. We need to write off this season and next if we want to get back on the right track.
The Jets still run a WCO? I guess it's possible and that the Jets are just so screwed up in general that it's hard to see but I don't think anything the Jets have done since Favre left town has looked much like a WCO. 2009 was just a clusterfuck after the first few games that wound up in G&P. 2010 was a do-no-harm offense until Holmes came in game 5 and then after that it looked more like a badly conceived run and shoot that eventually wound up in G&P. Last year was Air WTF until the protection made that break down completely when Mangold went down. This year has been all over the place with nowhere for the offense to run home too when things got hairy and predictably things have been hairy almost all season.
I hope I didn't mess up your original post pointing out something that really doesn't change what you are saying, because I think you make a lot of really good points. :beer:
It looks like some bastard child of the GnP & WCO. The endless slant pattern and this obsession with tall Wrs screams WCO to me. It always puts Sanchez in bad positions as his accuracy and height makes those throws problematic at best. Sanchez might prosper more in a downfield attack.
Not at all. Im glad you pointed that out. Unlike some i have no illusions of always being right on everything.
The slants are recurrent at this point but none of the other WCO stuff is there. The Jets don't run counters and draws at all. I think I have seen maybe a half dozen of those in recent games. They run very few screens and no WR screens at all. They run no quickouts at all. it's like the only part of the defense they attack is the area from tackle to tackle and 20 yards up the seams from there. Then we get all surprised when the defense always has a cloud of defenders on the play. People criticize Sanchez for staring down the receivers but he'd have to be looking off into space at places where nobody was if he wasn't doing that since the receivers are usually bunched in a tight area of the field, maybe two at the outside. It's just such a retarded offense at this point and it has succeeded in making Sanchez look full retard.
A lot of good points CMan55. I am not sure the solutions will work with this team but I can see no reason there should not be an attempt to get something - anything working. It is bad when my wife tells me ahead of each play what's about to happen. Embarrassing really. But alas - I get the feeling Rex is riding this plane crash all the way to the ground.
The franchise needs to make serious changes on the offensive side of the ball. Going back 10 years now this offense has played scared in big moments & can never seem to get the passing game off the ground.Part of it is having a run on defensive head coaches. But it's time the Jets built an aggressive offense from the ground up. Now it does appear that they are committed to building a WR corps . Hill/Kerley is not a bad start. They are starting to put a premium on speed which is nice & long overdue.That's one thing they did upgrade this season. I thought for sure that meant they would finally practice what Rex has preached to the media while here. Ground & pound w/ a downfield passing attack. But all I see is average push at the line of scrimmage, self inflicted wounds in the passing game which makes a defensive minded head coach pull the reigns in more & more each week. It's time this organization quits playing scared. You can't always depend on your defense to bail you out.
Jets do not run a variation of WCO. Sparano runs an Erhardt-Perkins playbook. Belidick and Todd Haley run a variation of Erhardt-Perkins. WCO, Coryell and EP are the three dominant playbooks in today's NFL. Favre was a WCO guy and we brought him into Schott's Coryell variation. Didn't work out well.
The run game sucks and unfortunately, it's shortcomings are a a combination of coaching, design, and players attempting to execute it. Difficult to say whether the players mistakes/difficulties are with them (they just can't do it), or with poor coaching.
As a long time jets fan you should above all have patience. Realize this team is at least two years out of contention and hope for the best in the mean time. Our olb both need to be upgraded one through the draft one through free agency. And our Oline needs to be rebuilt. Along with drafting or signing a feature running back. I'm the meantime woody as any other business man would is willing to waste a fourth round pick for the most popular move in the nfl. It is smart and doesn't damage the team with too much besides hell half the world wants our fourth round trade to start!!!!
What the Jets are playing this year is basically: running game stutters due to slow backs and mediocre to poor lineplay, WR's can't get much separation and then with the exception of Kerley don't have particularly good hands, QB is inaccurate and now gun-shy about throwing quick passes over the middle as well. It's Erhardt-Perkins with very low talent levels in the skill players. Really it's not Erhardt-Perkins though because it is missing the deep post routes that keep the defense honest in the middle of the field. When the Jets do throw deep it's usually a sideline route which makes the inaccurate QB even less likely to throw a good pass. Braylon Edwards made the deep sideline game work in whatever the mutant was because he was going to be the whole story, good or bad. on most balls thrown in his very large catch basket. He'd screw things up now and then but he'd also grab balls that were off-target and bring them down.
