I liked his brother more tbh , again he and antonio allen are not scrubs but they arent starting material to a championship defense.
It sucks to hear because if we had a better secondary, especially cornerbacks, we could leave them on islands all while blitzing safeties and additional linebackers with our improve defensive line. This is what makes defenses downright scary. If you can send the house with a good pash rush AND lock down their receievers, there really is nothing and offense can do at least when it comes to throwing the ball. Rex has now got to keep guys back and hope our front 3 or 4 guys can get to the quarterback. Additionally he can do a lot of disguising to confuse the offense, which will probably be the case.
lol. This thread title as foreshadowing today's practice. "good safeties to cover up at CB"...yes...exactly. Antonio "island" Allen at CB today with 2 interceptions lol.
I find Allen very comparable to Kam Chancellor. While Kam is the bigger hitter, Allen is better in coverage. Don't see why Allen can't be championship defense starting material provided he is paired with a rangy ball-hawking FS in the mold of Earl Thomas. Hopefully, I'm wrong about Pryor and he becomes our Earl Thomas type FS as I think we already have our SS in Allen.
With the depth Jets have a Safety, moving Allen to CB might be a smart move. Safeties: Landry Pryor Jarret Rontez Starting CBs Antonio Allen + Patterson.
Tbh, they didn't fully know what they had. It's NOW an area of depth that they drafted pryor because: Landy, pryor, Allen, Jarret, Rontez. Jarrett all of a sudden is having a stellar training camp. Rontez has done some really nice things as well.
They knew what they had in Landry and Allen. Bush and Jarret played well enough in the past to garner significant playing time is certain sub packages. They also liked what they saw from Rontez enough to promote him from practice squad so that he was not snatched by another team. The existing players' contributions to the depth at safety are nothing new. We had depth at that spot even before Pryor as evident by the fact no one is really worrying about Pryor being out.
Also I don't know why so many are so comfortable in using the "they didn't know what they had" excuse. Aren't they getting paid millions of dollars to know? What are they doing when watching these guys in practice?
Jarrett really hadn't come on THIS strong before. They really didn't know that much about Rontez. He did some good things last year, but really popped out this year. I am not arguing that they didn't know about Landry. Allen is a guy they hope to breakout this year. There was also speculation that they drafted Pryor because they were planning to move Antonio Allen to CB eventually anyways.
I think the issue is more of the green kool-aid type. We have a handful of guys that aren't major liabilities at the position. It's far from a position of strength. Also take note guys like Antonio Allen (or on offense Kerley) are the reason why you don't trade away late round picks like they're M&Ms. Hitting in the draft on guys that are good role players that cost the team next to nothing in terms of both the cap and draft ammunition is as important as finding stars in the early rounds.
What stinks is that Pryor if he ends up not having the necessary range to play the centerfielding FS role in the NFL, he will end up pushing a great value gem like Allen out of the starting line-up or even worse out of the roster. You can bet that if Pryor becomes nothing more than an in-the-box safety, the powers that be will make sure that he gets plugged into that SS spot rather than a 7th round draft pick from the prior FO. The redundancy ends up hurting us at 2 positions.
interesting piece on Allen: http://www.nj.com/jets/index.ssf/20...ld_jets_rex_ryan_about_his_nfl_potential.html
That was a great article, thanks for sharing.It's nice to have articles that talk about things on the field, instead of controversies, etc. Articles like this used to be the norm. I watched a lot of Allen at Carolina. I don't think he can hold up as a corner but he's also progressed a lot since he left there.I think his former position coach would be surprised as he is quite the different player than he was at Carolina. I am glad that they are giving him a shot at the position and it was a good first day! who knows, I guess.
The concern about Allen has to be that while he has impressed us all here for his ability to cover man to man in the middle, those are role specific assignments. He in fact is not that fast, which hurts his ability to cover outside speedburners as opposed to lumbering TE's. Plus I don't recall him doing much at other safety specific roles, other than the mentioned covering TE's and out of the backfield. He in short is a developing player with promise. I would rather see him working on becoming a better safety, his natural role, than spending time playing stop gap CB, which imo he is unlikely to stick at. We all understand the team has a need at Cb right now, but in terms of player development, is moving Allen to Cb right now such a long term good idea?
I don't think it is a long term anyway so I don't really worry about one practice hurting him in the long term. It actually might help his development as a safety to get experience playing corner in practice, learning to cover guys one on one, get himself turned around to the ball, etc. Especially since he's not going to ever be the center fielder type safety like Ed Reed. He's always going to be the type to have role specific assignments at safety, like the article touched on. If he was a top draft pick at safety with the desire to turn him into a ball hawking center fielder (say like Pryor), yes I would worry about his development trying him at corner. But he's a guy barely on the roster with a specific role, one that is similar to the corner position anyway... he's a tweener.. lets see what he can do.
I understand your point, and did not mean to suggest one week's practice at cb will adversely affect his development as a safety, obviously. And yes, there may be some benefits. But tweener players can be problematic if you find yourself needing a solid starter. The Jets have Pryor, Landry and Allen at safety right now, and a bunch of bench players. That's all I am saying.
I doubt that Allen will start many games at safety, but I think Rex wants to get him some experience in that role just in case. If we end up having terrible corners, Allen might be able to fill that role for a time. The other thing that jumps to mind is that if Allen can play safety, corner, and linebacker (in college he was a linebacker/safety hybrid) then Rex can use him in unpredictable ways since opposing QBs will have a harder time knowing what he's going to do. Good safeties always help the secondary, and hopefully we'll see some guys step up in the second preseason game.
Seems Rex is trying to mold AA into an Antrel Rolle type player. Rolle lined up last season at FS, SS, or Nickel. I would rather have him get comfortable in one position first.
