Ulbrich, to me , is someone to be concerned about. I personally, didn't see ANY improvement from that defense. No one was truly impactful, no players were, coached up, and every time the defense took the field..I cringed. Time after time...guys out of position, 3rd and 29 becomes 1st downs, cant stop anything, cant get to QB... NOT much of anything. Alarming. I also need to see Saleh totally involved, when things go south. Stop trying to run shit that doesn't fit the players, and STICKING to it. Adjust. Just because they played a year of that mess, in no way means they'll be all the better for it next season.
Jets defensive rankings Year------------Yds allowed-----------Points allowed 2019----------------16th-----------------------17th 2020----------------24th-----------------------26th 2021----------------32nd----------------------32nd
And we had better players on defense in 2021 than the other 2 years. Just totally inexcusable performance.
not really and we switched from a 3-4 to a 4-3 and didn't invest much in the defense at all except lawson who never played a snap due to injury.
2019 starters: Henry Anderson Steve McLendon Quinnen Jordan Jenkins James Burgess Neville Hewitt Nate Hairston Darryl Roberts Jamal Adams Marcus Maye Brian Poole 2020: Anderson Fatukasi Quinnen Tarell Basham Harvey Langi Hewitt Jordan Jenkins Bryce Hall Bless Austin Ashtyn Davis Maye I don't think there's any doubt that 2021's defensive starters were better than these. I get the scheme thing but if the roster is woefully suited for the scheme and the coordinator and coach roll with the scheme anyway en route to the worst defense in franchise history then that's still on the coaches which was my larger point.
But Lawson was not on the team prior to 2021 so we don't know what his impact would have been, and we got CJ Moseley back who made the majority of tackles on D. And I don't buy the switch on defenses argument. If you going to change schemes then presumably you do it to make the performance better not worse.
we had a ton of injuries in 2021 as well. and a lot of young players and a new system. it's tough to have any success in that situation. you do it for the future, you don't expect it to take in the 1st year, especially when you don't have the talent for it yet. that's what draft picks and cap room is for but gonna be another year before we can see it be sucessful
Still don't buy that argument. When you draft a player like Wilson, that's for the future. However, changing a defensive scheme should produce results immediately because 1) you know who your players are and what they're capable of, 2) you can't predict who you'll be able to draft and/or sign in the future. The one factor that I will admit added to the poor defensive performance is the poor offensive performance. When the defense is forced to spend the majority of game time on the field, it's performance is going to suffer. However, I'm not sure that ranking dead last can be attributed to this one factor alone.
we didn't have the players for the system though. we had to overhaul the whole LBer group, we don't have the rush yet, the Cbs were pretty bad. we also traded away adams for 2 premium picks that we haven't used yet. JD traded off a lot of players in the 19/20 offseasons for future assets that we haven't used yet. very rarely if ever has a defensive scheme change yielded immediate results
We had injuries and a lot of young players in each of these years, as well as a new DC in 2019 as well. Rogers and Williams ran hybrid schemes, it's not like the 4-3 was totally foreign to our players before last season. We also have a lot of evidence that Saleh was overrated as a DC in SF. Their defense wasn't good until they hit on a ton of DL and their defense was very good without Saleh last year. It's looking more and more like Saleh was carried by immense talent on the DL and is a questionable defensive mind otherwise.
The OP didn't say Ulbrich was bad, only concerning, and based on what we saw on the field and the stats I posted, I agree.
of course a different DC woulda been better. Ulbrich is bad at blitzing, keeps his safeties so far back they are useless, keeps his defensive linemen on the bench for roughly half the game and went 17 games without being able to teach his guys to stop a basic screen pass
Ulbrich did adjust, but it took him half the season to do it. Pinnock developed, as did Echols and Hall. Sherwood and Nasirildeen might have if they hadn't been injured. JFM played well early. Both Lawson and Huff were looking great before they got injured. There's no doubt that Ulbrich and Saleh need to do a better job, but injuries played a HUGE part in how the D played. They were also learning a new complex scheme. With a year's experience in the scheme, the D should be better. Having the injured players back will help, and hopefully, Ulbrich and Saleh will do a better job of adapting the scheme to fit the talents of the players we have and JD will be able to add more talent at Edge and S, if not LB and CB this offseason, which should also help immensely.
I disagree. Any time there is a scheme change, there is going to be an adjustment period. The scheme Saleh uses is a notoriously complex scheme and it takes a year for players to start feeling comfortable and confident in it. I believe that he knew the D would struggle last season, but thought it would be better. Don't forget that we had a ton of rookies and young players playing key minutes before the injuries. That has an effect too. It would have been if we hadn't lost so many key players to injury. They knew with the offense having a rookie QB and a complex scheme that takes a couple of years to master, they might as well go ahead and install the scheme Saleh wants to use so that by the time the offense is ready to make noise, the D will be ready to play at a high level too. Saleh and Ulbrich were new to the team. How were they suppposed to immediately know their players and what they were capable of? One can't predict how a player will adapt to a new scheme, either.
you could say that, not sure where the 50% thing comes from though. Saleh is the one who likes to make sure we rotate lineman to keep them fresh and our starters play about 2/3rds of the snaps statistically. we also seen hall and echols flourish as young players. pinnock improved when moved to safety. carter II had a good year as a rookie. quincy had a good year as a waiver pick up. we got a lot out of very little but at the end of the day the D just lacked talent so it's hard to judge ulbrich fairly
I’d say he is the most likely to be fired at the end of next season. He was dealt some bad cards but didn’t help himself either. Another year in the system and a few upgrades should see drastic improvement, if it doesn’t he’ll be gone
I’d think if you were so sure, you’d put up a list of the 2021 starters the same as you did for 2020 and 2019
I didn't feel the need to since I figured they're all pretty fresh in our heads. If you'd like to list them and claim they aren't better then go ahead.