definitely. This schedule is front loaded. The built in excuses that have already started kind of get exhausting too. The pats had the luxury of slow starts because everyone knew it was a fact it wouldn’t last. For us, we don’t even have a window of opportunity, we have a sight glass on a toy ship
Rodgers may not need it, but the other guys might as they are not MVPs or HOFers. The OC could use the opportunity to refine his game planning as well. If they want to go into the season without the 1's having any significant playing time together is a unnecessary risk and frankly arrogant. The OLine had better be on top of their game or our 40yo HOFer may not last half the season. Will the run game actually be an improvement over last year? Pass Pro had better be better. Do we really want to wait for the season to start for answers to these questions? Hackett should have something to prove too. Vanilla is fine for the preseason, but when the real games begin, he needs to show his system actually works as what happened with Rodgers in GB may not work again here in NY. Won't be joint practices anymore.. Question: How can a joint practice be more intense than a real game that counts?
It's a worthwhile question to ask and I think the answer stems from where you're setting the bar. Are you expecting a Super Bowl run in '23? Then yeah, you're absolutely being unrealistic. Are you expecting a 9-11 win season where we make the playoffs and let the chips fall where they may in Jan/Feb? That doesn't seem unrealistic to me and is where I've set MY bar for this season. Especially considering we won 7 games last year with the least production from the QB spot in the entire league. Rodgers may not be MVP Rodgers anymore at his age but I have a hard time envisioning a scenario where he suddenly becomes one of the worst QBs in the league.
Sadly, its more than the QB that should factor in here. Rodgers is one of 11 guys on Offense and one of 53 on the roster. He can't play every position. I hope the rest of the team, in particular the offense, is ready for the regular season. I would have the lofty expectations on hold until '24 but I'm a cautious and patient person by nature.
Part of this post is talking about Hackett keeping it simple. I mean that’s how every preseason game 1 goes. Not sure why this is tying directly into anything. Last night is a glorified scrimmage to test the kids and the back end of the roster. Otherwise the point of them needing to play together is valid but I trust Rodgers in that aspect. It’s to be expected to see a lack of cohesiveness early on but the tools to be successful I feel are on this roster. Just got to put it together.
If anyone thinks the offense we saw last night will be the offense we run in the regular season has to put down the crack pipe. Just wow.
I think there's a lot of validity to having this outlook. That's why it's comforting to hear Rodgers say things like, "this isn't a one-and-done thing", "going to be a few years partnership", etc. That's why I have the outlook I do. I expect there to be some stumbles on offense early in the season as most of the important players on offense will still be trying to learn it AND learn how to play with Rodgers. However, I expect those struggles to become few and far between as we progress through the season and hopefully become non-existent as we enter the playoff crunch. With the talent we have on defense, at the skill positions, and with Rodgers under center, it would be a fairly large disappointment IMO to not be in playoff contention in December/January.
My feelings exactly. Getting the timing down pat early on, against tough opponents to boot, will help us in the stretch.
My honest take, for what It's worth. I think NYJ fans are hurting for a winner. Most of us would give our left nut (metaphorically speaking) to have a team that we can be proud of, get behind, and support/cheer. We all want things to be great... Aaron Rodgers gives us all hope. The energy Is good. However... There are a lot of concerns that people are intentionally or unintentionally ignoring that I feel should cause some serious concerns for a lot of us. It should at the very least, give us a bit of pause to walk towards the starting line with a cautious, yet, optimistic outlook. Aaron Rodgers - future HOF QB - Isn't In his prime anymore. He's not. He just came off a down year to boot and hasn't won a SB In 13 years. Ironically, the same number of years It's been since we've made the playoffs. Was last season an anomaly or a future outlier? I think, deep down, Aaron Rodgers Is going to play out of his mind. Still though, you just don't know, till you know. Offensive Line - What a fucking question mark this extremely important group of men Is.. This Is my biggest concern by far and this Is a big one In all imaginable ways possible. Becton Is scared to play, our supposed "starting" LT has been injured all off-season, and he Is old as dirt (In football terms), a lot of NYJ fans don't even know the names of the guys competing at RT. Laken Tomlinson had a very pedestrian year last season, and our highly drafted C can't even sniff reps at first team. McGovern Is a steady player but how much does he got left In the tank? I think our OL overall Is dogshit but I hope I am wrong on this one. WR Depth - It seems like every year we have multiple WR getting injured, out for significant time, etc... This off-season Is apparently no different. I was optimistic with the emergence of Brownlee In camp but he looked like dog shit In his first live game. If even a couple of our WR miss significant playing time, I think we are fucked. Hackett Effect - The fact is, this dude just had a really rough year with the Broncos. It was ugly. Can he recover, will he recover? Like Cman said In the OP... The game plan was very predictable, we all know It was ONE preseason game and that Is very true. It's still a little concerning when you factor all of It up. Will this OC be good enough to elevate this offense to the level It needs to be In order to even have a shot at a SB? I'm not so sure but I'm hopeful. I'm also a little worried. Cautiously optimistic. Running Backs - We all know how good Breece Hall was looking before the injury. We all assume he Is going to just pick right back up to form once he gets back on the field. Will he though? That was a significant injury. To play devils advocate here, what If he isn't the same coming back from this injury? What If he struggles after injury In the same fashion that a more recent NYJ RB did? James Robinson. This kid looked like a stud before he got hurt, but then he got hurt. Hasn't been the same since. We don't have great depth, we have okay depth at the position, not great though. Carter has seemingly fell off somehow, Bam Bam has potential but Isn't the answer.. I don't know, Its concerning to me. The only position group I'm extremely confident In on offense Is TE. We have good starters with great depth there. Now, I'm not saying this Is all going to be doom and gloom. These are concerns. Concerns that have some level of validity to them. IMO I expect most of those concerns to be eradicated come week 1, however, this Is the NYJ. Until I see the good shit, It's hard to believe. Classic darksider mentality. Yeah, I get It. Still...
Valid points. I think the assessment that Brownlee was dogshit is a little over the top. We all had high expectations and his one drop was bad but had a couple of nice catches under suspect QB performance.
I saw that Rodgers hasn't taken a pre-season snap since 2018! I am all for ZW getting some low stress action and hopefully improving as either he's a long term solution or we are going to have 1 or 2 interesting seasons and then we'll be back to decades of not having a QB
Well that explains why he won't take a preseason snap this year.. Just something he doesn't do. I hope the rest of the starters don't need the preseason either.
He had a couple really bad drops. Not just one. He had 5 targets, only caught two for 17 yards. It's not a good first showing by my eye test. Two catches. Two bad drops. One uncatchable long ball. I expected more from the TC hype.
I'm feeling the same way today, cman. Excellent point about Hackett probably having to keep things simple with the backups. I understand their not wanting to risk getting any starters hurt, especially Rodgers, in preseason, but if they don't and then lose games during the early part of the season that they could and should have won, that's not good, either.
Yep.. It's gonna take time for the offense to gel. It's also gonna take time for Hackett to get a feel for the talent at his disposal. Maybe by game 3-4 we will know how well this experiment with Rodgers is working. They may be thinking Rodgers is the last Son of krypton but its the other 10 guys that might not have superpowers and need real time reps. They'll get them in real games but by then, it might become problematic especially if the injury bug strikes. Being all in on '23 sounds great, but I really don't know if its practical this year given the lack of experience on the sidelines and all the new parts on the field meshing into the juggernaut we all hope they become one day.
We’re in season 5 of the rebuild. We had 7 wins with the 25th ranked offense last year and just landed a HOF quarterback who up until this point has not shown any physical decline in terms of his arm or mobility (was never much of a runner anyways to be honest). We also didn’t really lose all too many pieces. Why should we not expect a WC game and realistically a WC win at minimum?
We'll only go as far as our OLine takes us and our OC guides us. We just don't know yet exactly what we have. We got names, we got resumes and reputations. We need wins.
