This is really starting to concern me, despite the fact that we moved the ball well on the ground against the Ravens D who were crowding the LOS. It takes a heck of a lot more energy to execute a run play than it does to execute a pass, at least for the O-line. Not only that, but with the pile of assholes you usually end up with at the end of a running play, injuries are a lot more likely, especially if the O-linemen are tired and falling on eachother. Sure, the D-line should be equally tired, but it's easier to sub in on D. If we're starting late-game drives around our 20 and trying to drive down the field, get to the opponents' 40 and face a 3rd and 9, you can bet we'll be facing some sort of overload, so let's hope our guys have enough in the tank to hold long enough for Sanchez to connect. It you expand this scenario over 16 games, I can see the wear and tear breaking down the overall performance of the line or maybe even causing a few starters to miss games at times. I guess you don't realize the importance of so many unsung backups who shore up offensive lines until your team doesn't have many. I'm not predicting disaster, just expressing my concern. On the flipside, this season could serve to bring the line together and give us a long-term solid unit that will support our entire offense for seasons to come.
We had the AFCs leading rusher last year with no depth at all. This year Ryan expects to get Washington 300 touches. They will do just fine.
Plus they moved the ball against Baltimore without a healthy offensive line. I don't think our backup lineman are as bad as made out to be.
We also had a lot of luck with the health of our O-line and a QB that wasn't afraid to sling the ball and keep defenses honest. Now have a rookie QB under center and we're going to be running ball control and playing it close to the vest. I'm thinking that Leon is going to be a much bigger factor on the ground this year, but if you're going to grind it as much as it seems they want to, you have to expect your trench players to get banged around. Three of our starting O-linemen have already missed a significant part of the offseason to injury. Depth is a huge concern for me.
I agree we're thin. This is what pains me about the last 2 drafts with Tannenbaum trading away picks to move up. With a young franchise QB, next year's draft should be all about the offensive and defensive lines. Faneca and Woody are playing well but, getting long in the tooth, and we don't really know how effective the backups are. You have the same situation on defensive with a very good NT who's old and an injury risk and no effective back-up, and non-descript DEs. Ellis is OK, but he's hot and cold, and getting old. Enough trading up...keep the picks we have...add picks...and let's get some depth and girth along the line of scrimmage.
You definitely won't get any argument from me there. I know we spent 2 first rounders on the O-line 4 years ago, but other than that, we've pretty much neglected the trenches in the draft.
Drafting for depth just isn't sexy the way trading up for big stars is. We hit the nail on the head doing it the year we got Brick and Mangold, but I agree that even though picking an O-lineman in the 4th-74th round isn't really exciting, it is super important.
The depth on the OL isn't great...but compared to year's past..it's light years ahead. Watch some of the second and third team o-linemen from some of he Herm/Mangini era preseason games. Guys like Dave Yovanovits, Marko Cavka,Jacob Bender, etc were atrocious in those games. At least Hunter, Krajicek, Turner,Slauson and Andrews can give our back-up QB's a sufficient 3 seconds to look downfield. I realize second and third teamers are completely different than taking over for a guy like Faneca...but at least these guys have shown SOME ability to be effective.
I am loving that we have a 305lb OL playing TE. Imagine he turned into a full time TE for us at 300 lbs!!!
If the Jets stay healthy they're going to be ok. If they don't there will be big problems. The lack of depth basically just means that the downside is deeper for them if things go wrong. In 2007 we'd have gone 7-9 or maybe even 8-8 if we'd had a solid backup guard to replace Kendall. That's a remnant of the D-Rob tradeup because the logical pick to make in the 20's with the second first rounder would have been a guard, given that Randy Thomas had just left town and Dave Szott was nearing the end of the line. If we have problems this year at guard due to depth they'll be remnants of the Revis tradeup alongside the earlier remnants of the D-Rob mistake, since Ben Grubb would have been sitting there waiting for us on our pick that year. Over the years a bunch of tradeups turn a roster brittle and force a team to rely heavily on aging free agents to fill gaps. This in turn makes the roster even more brittle. With luck the Jets have a relatively injury free year in the trenches and we get to push off the ultimate price of all the tradeups the teams has made since 2001 for another season.
Your right, we moved the ball well agains the #3 run defense from last year. Thats a good sign. The Ravens and Falcons ran the ball 55% of the time last year. How many injuries did thier O-lines have? I'm not sure why your just worring about runnign a lot ,but its a silly notion. Ask a group of O-lineman if they would rather run block or pass block and 90% of hem will say run. These guys are maulers and they want to be the ones who make things happen on our offense. This unit already has grown together over the past year. As for seasons to come, well one only needs to look at Faneca's age to know its not going to be too many seasons without a replacement. Its good that we have all 5 returning this year, but we need to add quality depth through the draft soon.
Yup, that's about all there is to say about it at this point. Plus, if one of our starters does go down, you cross your fingers and pray that one of our backups can rise to the occasion. Hopefully next year we don't have to spend all of our picks on one big move and we can beef up the lines.
You hope no one gets hurt Hunter and Turner have both been in this team for a while so they should be quite comfortable whoever they have to substitute... Slauson hopefully has some talent since we drafted him and in college he played for our O.line coach... I think we'll need to pick up another T off waivers because Hunter is also our third TE and Slauson and Turner are guards. Was Kracalick at least decent? Anyways the situation coulb be a lot worse!
yeah i would have to say that im not to worried about our lack of depth...i think we have 3 very serviceable backups in hunter slauson and Turner
As Long as your starters stay healthy and do what they do. We proved that last year with no O-Line depth and T.J. was one of the best rushers in the AFC.
i liked what i saw from our 2nd-stringers in the 2 preseason games so far.. i think they did a decent job especially at protecting the qb... the biggest problem would be if Brick goes down..
