...driving .... should've mentioned this, this morning: You are all, VERY welcome; you're TGG, period. That said, I forgot to mention that I am traveling with the child bride ('Mrs.') and am traveling this afternoon down state from cortland back home to to the metro-nyc area. And THAT is why, in the meantime, your's truly is late in addressing the "post-report" questions that I've read "en route" in this thread thus far. Gimme a minute or two, or three...I'll get to it. day'em!..
Joe so far is the only reporter who is knowledgeable and an actual Jet fan. You won't find the like in New York's newspapers. Thank You Joe for your efforts.
guys like joe are the reason why newspapers are failing. people would rather read a blog by someone who actually knows what they are talking about and who is actually paying attention. these douchebags who cover the teams are clueless and lazy.
Joe, Read your post twice then printed it out for Ms. Coach to compare with what she heard on the TV. She loved your straight forward coverage with none of the usual BS that most "reporters" spew out. Informative and succinct. Thanks.
Joe: You're the best beat reporter the Jets (and us, fans) have had in a long time. Thanks for your hard work.
Excellent write up ... have to love getting coverage that does not have an agenda. Thank you very much.
It would be nice if Joe worked for ESPN instead of the current clown show we have. Who would have thought? A guy that can actually break the positions and players down and show how they are coming along instead of just giving QB stats.
Thanks abyzmul. I'm glad that you and the good folks here enjoyed it. ______________________________________________________________ While both were given limited opportunities (didn't figure on them featuring the FBs much), both were good in their limited roles. Hilliard on the opening drive broke a tackle for a nice gain (had a little more speed than I thought). Bohanan showed on Friday that he's a capable receiver as well and on Saturday had a nice, hard run for a good gain. The kid's calves are big--stocky young dude. _________________________________________________________________ IdiditMawae, a few (very early) impressions: 1. Red zone offense. On Friday, the defense got the better of the offense on goal line drills while on Saturday, the offense shot itself in the foot with penalties. 2. Pass defense between the hash marks: both on Friday and on Saturday the mid-to-deep post area was a place where 'holes' appeared on several occassions. 3. Quinton Coples "in space": The guy btw is an absolute beast specimen. While used to playing in confined (DL) areas, he needs to better learn to "breakdown" when coming face-to-face with a receiver-turned-ballcarrier in open space. Again, new to the edge so I maybe shouldn't read too much into it. ________________________________________________________________ hi alleycat, Geno's drop backs were fine. On the first drive he did work pratically all plays from the shotgun (I think I made mention in my OP about when he worked out from under center in that 1st drive--when they were deep in "Green" [defense's] territory). As for the plant foot positioning, I guess that's just a "Geno" thing (it is what it is) and that coaches are maybe more concerned with other facets of his footwork (backpedal, position while under center, etc.). In any event, being elevated in the stands on Saturday as opposed to standing on the sideline on Friday, I was able to get a better view of the footwork and accordingly took time to notice the difference between Smith & Sanchez' respective set up postions: -if you can imagine the right (plant) foot pointing straight ahead towards the line of scrimmage as 12:00 o'clock and when pointed out 90-degrees towards the sideline as 3:00 o'clock, Geno's plant foot points slightly 'backwards' in a 4:00 o'clock position. Mark on the other hand has his foot pointing at 2:30 and when he pivots into his throw ends up with it pointing at about a 1:30 position. <---I'm sure that reads clear-as-mud. lol. ________________________________________________________________ From what I saw, both Geno and Mark looked good in directing the 1st team offense on drives. In the case of Geno, his opening drive was sabotaged by red zone penalties and in the case of Mark, by missing Clyde Gates on a drive-capping TD on a post pattern when Gates had his man beat by 2 steps. jmho, but I though Smith--for a rookie--showed a nice 'presence' when he came out on that opening drive. And it was fueled in part with the crowd buzzing when they broke the huddle and set up at the line of scrimmage for the opening play with Geno in the shotgun postion...that is, the crowd was amped to see what looked like a 180-degree departure from last year's "vanilla-no-TDs" pre-season offensive yawn fest. _______________________________________________________________ Hi Br4dw4y5ux, while Geno's got the 'buzz' factor going, Sanchez to his credit (at least what little I've seen) is not yet spitting the bit either in that he's not looking like the deer-in-the-headlights fool he was against Arizona last season. On Saturday he had a bad throw to Cro and he did look silly catching his clete on the turf and falling on his ass (not to mention having to chase down that errant shotgun snap-not his fault), but overall he showed some young veteran 'presence' as well. I really can't wait until Detroit when we get to see the both of them playing "non-redshirt" QB. ______________________________________________________________ northernjet, to be truthful, I sort of had my hands full trying to self-text on the fly (while combating the ef'fin "auto-correct" that fought me at every turn-lol) so as to of keep up with and log every play that was run from scrimmage. Anyway, my take on the defense would start off by saying (no surprise here) that Mo Wilk was a great pick at #30. As for Coples, he was mostly playing hands down (stood up on some passing downs--I previously commented on that). As for Dee Milliner, you can see why this guy's a #1 pick. The talent's there and his breakup on the first drive of a 'out' pattern was aggressive and physical. That said, it's early and if you recall.....once upon a time there was a 2nd yr. CB out of the Univ. of Pitt named Darrelle Revis who in a pre-season game against the Cleveland Browns was schooled on an opening drive by a tall, rangy receiver by the name of Braylon Edwards (QB Anderson?). It's still early and he'll take his lumps as all rookies do. But the talent package is apparent just looking at him. Roll Tide! ;-) And as for the safeties, as I mentioned earlier, I do have some concerns with our pass coverage in the mid-to-deep middle. The pre-season games will tell whether that's a legitimate concern or not. _______________________________________________________________ Tell you what, while he was working mostly with the 2's on both Friday & Saturday, the thing about Sapp is that you came away "noticing" him admist the other guys wearing "50's" numbers. On that hit he gave Griffith, it was a little bit of right place/right time as well as Griffith not seeing him. That said, he did lay the wood. And on Friday, he was buzzing around in the backfield on several occassions, one time almost taking Mark Sanchez' head off (Nacho ducked). What I did notice was that Sapp in uniform while not beastly LB big doesn't look Aaron Maybin small either. Size-wise (standing on the sideline next to David Harris & DeMario Davis) he matched up favorably with Harris while Davis looked to be the lightest of the bunch (from my vantage point anyway). _______________________________________________________________ Misc: after the Green & White Scrimmage, there was a "players only" get together in the downstairs bar at the Dark Horse Tavern. From a guy working it, he said that this year there was a significant fewer number of players there compared to other years and that it was low-key. On to Detroit! Anybody got an extra plane ticket? ;-)
Thanks for taking the time to fill us all in! I agree, sounds like Geno Smith is ahead a bit. Can't wait for Friday