So yeah, we laid a big shitty egg in San Diego, but instead of just generalizations about how much we suck, why did that happen? First of all, the coaches made a big misjudgment. Believing San Diego would not be particularly successful at running the ball, the Jets deactivated Kenrick Ellis for the game. In ordinary circumstances this may not have been a terrible move, but the blazing heat that day utterly exhausted the defensive linemen. Nose Tackles need a rotation, especially when the elements are so harsh. The Jets did ok against the run early, but as Snacks got more and more exhausted, they had more success, not to mention when they had to rotate Snacks out for rest, thus having a less effective run stopping front. The bad news is that the coaching staff messed up. The good news is that I expect the Jets run defense to be better again moving forward. Our secondary was actually not what got us killed the other day. We gave up a few plays, but without a big catch and run from Brandon Oliver, Rivers didn't have a huge day in terms of yards. The good side was Milliner was pretty successful guarding a very good WR in Keenan Allen. The bad side was that the Phillip Rivers to Antonio Gates connection was very much alive. I had hoped that Allen would be able to cover TE's similar to the way he did last year, but it seems as though his time at CB has diminished his ability to do it. I shouldn't be all that surprised about that, however. Phillip Rivers is playing elite ball right now. He's got a nice range of talent in Keenan Allen, a healthy Malcolm Floyd, Eddie Royal, Antonio Gates, Ladarius Green, and now Brandon Oliver in a Sproles-like role. I have to think they'll go pretty far this year. Based on this pass-first attack, and Donald Brown as the starting RB, it's not unreasonable to deactivate a backup NT to get the maximum passing down defenders active, but the intense heat was not accounted for. Add these factors to traveling from coast to coast, and we really shouldn't be all that surprised about what happened. I'm not prepared to assume that we can expect blowout losses all season, even against Manning and the Broncos. Then again, maybe I'll just be disappointed.
I blame the heat for a lot of it. The D-line was visibly exhausted (don't know why only 4 were active, we should have been cycling) I don't expect them to get gashed like that ever again. I really hope the same can be said for the O-line. If they were just worn out from the heat I feel a little bit better about it. They were the reason the offense couldn't do anything, there was no time to throw (at all) and the running game couldn't get going because of them. The secondary actually played very well. Milliner was fantastic in his return and the only big plays were a couple of marvelous throws and catches against us (particularly Walls), somehow opposing teams always make those plays in tight windows versus us. Pryor was really bad though. Like atrocious. The coverage breakdowns were actually by linebackers a lot of the times, we mostly got torn up by Oliver and Gates. I hope we can partially attribute that to the heat as well because David Harris was absolute shit in coverage on Sunday. The big body guys are usually the ones who struggle in that weather. All in all it was a terrible, terrible loss, but I think it would have been far less horrific if it was played in football weather. The 90+ heat and humidity took away our only 2 strengths, run D and run O, and possibly attributed to O-line breakdowns which sucks because Geno can't do anything under pressure. Obviously the main culprit is the Jets, but I don't think we're as bad as the results of that game indicate. Though, I don't expect to be competitive with the Broncos.
Snacks didn't play any more than he normally plays and Ellis has averaged about 10 snaps a game all year and was also out for the Lions game. The Lions rushed for less than 100 yards in that one. I think to much has been made about Ellis' deactivation. I understand the theory about the heat. Makes total sense. But in order to counteract that the Jets would have had to limit Snacks snaps and increase Ellis' in order to do that. Which, if thats what your saying, fair point lol
Both Ellis and Barnes were deactivated making the rotation very thin. Add the heat to the equation and you got the cluster fuck that Sunday. Another reason we got run on was that because we played nickel a lot. Not sure if that was by design or because of the shortened rotation and the heat, probably a little bit of both.
There were probably a whole bunch of reasons why we didn't do well against the run in the SD game. The heat and the D-Line getting exhausted as the game went on, the shortened rotation, Rex focusing on stopping the pass with a whole bunch of defensive backs. I also think maybe the Jets didn't game-plan for that Oliver dude since he is a back-up. It's much tougher to play against a good player when you haven't studied him on film much and don't know his tendencies. And then finally there were just mistakes made. On one huge play for them, I think I read that Douzable got caught in a double team and Oliver ran through his gap for a huge gain. As far as Antonio Allen covering tight ends, is it just me or is he a bit overrated in that role? His greatest moment in that vein came when he intercepted Brady while covering Gronkowski, but the thing is, he let Grownkowski catch something like 7+ balls for over a 100 yards that game. I like AA and everything, but I think Rex puts him in impossible positions, having to cover elite WRs and TEs alone play after play.
so according to the OP we got humiliated because Ellis was deactivated and AA has lost his ability to cover TEs? That seems easy enough to fix and then we will be on our way to the super bowl!
Max i get what your saying regarding the Dlineman and the heat. but Snacks only played 46% of the defensive snaps, which isn't too far off his norm. Douzable played quite a bit more than usual to provide some rotation. We could have used Ellis for a handful of snaps in the second half, but it wouldn't have made any difference as the game was already out of reach by then. i really see no issue with our rush defense going forward. Also should mention San Diego's rushing attack has been terrible, while Rivers has been playing some of his best football. The game plan ironically enough, seemed to feature 3 Safety sets, Nickel, and a lot of 3 Safety + Nickel. I say ironic, as we played a smaller DB driven formula, and we still couldn't cover anyone. 3rd downs were as bad as I've ever seen it, and no we didn't blitz every 3rd down as many like to claim. I forced myself to rewatch the D last night (was painful again), and will post up some other notes here when i get a little time.
Obviously the third downs just murdalized us. Sorry if this particular observation has already been discussed, but a couple of their second quarter third-down conversions were very, very lucky. And they were just daggers. I believe it was the second touchdown to Gates. Rivers under big pressure launched up an absolutely perfect ball -- basically out of his ass -- to the corner to Gates, who had Allen draped all over him. Absurd. And then later, when Rivers stepped up under big pressure and flicked the ball out to the sideline for a huge gainer. Yes, a botched coverage. But 7 times out of ten, thats a sack. Both of those happened on third down. Our offense was totally outclassed anyway, but if we manage to get off the field a couple of times on third down, the game doesn't spin out of control. All right, enough. I'm making myself sick.
46% of the snaps is kind of a lot for a big fat dude playing in on-field temperatures approaching 110° heat. That's not really a main reason why the Jets lost, but probably a good one why they gashed us on the ground late. The game was over in the first quarter.
There's always been problems figuring out how to deal with the travel, jet lag, time difference, etc. But that goes for all teams. And great point about the heat which was a contributing factor. As for the Dbs Walls had a terrible game but he was injured and didn't play that many snaps. Despite the critics who are crying and said we had to sign a top flight corner he played well this season before that game.
What I'm saying is Snacks was clearly gassed, and would have been more effective per snap if Ellis was getting snaps early on. Snacks wasn't the only DL gassed either, and like you're saying the game plan revolved around defending the pass. I'm not saying we would have won this game had Ellis been involved. I was simply talking about it in relation to the weakness of our run defense.
46%... of a lot of snaps. The heat certainly was a factor, but scoring 0 points rarely wins games. Although I give Rex a lot of shit for screwing things up, I don't think there was any chance we win that game. If the offence did anything, it wouldn't have been as ugly.
