McFadden had 614 yards in 7 games last season but he got 171 of them against the Jets. McCoy had 1309 yards in 15 games but 160 against the Jets. Yes, both of them are good backs but they looked like O.J. Dickerson against the Jets last year. This is an issue for a defense that wants to claim dominance. Not being able to stop fast tailbacks is kind of crippling in that regard.
Jets run D was solid up the middle & weak on the edges. Eagles/Raiders exposed the Jets inability to set the edge big time. Luckily for the Jets, not every team in the NFL is capable of taking advantage of this weakness. If Jets were to make the playoffs, the odds of running into a team capable of exposing the D's slowness on outside goes up a lot.
The opening drive in that game was the most embarrassing, spirit-killing drive in my 30+ years of watching Jet football.
Even an overall very good D will have some areas that are weaker than others. It is a rare thing that a team, or even the D vs. the O, would be equally good across all relevant areas. This does not mean that the Jets cannot and should not seek to improve their run D, particularly overall speed at linebacker needs to improve. Part of what will make the coming season interesting is to see how well Davis can help in that regard, and possibly Maybin being able to stay on the field and contribute on run D as well. As it stood entering this off season the Jets looked to need to replace two, at least two, starting lb's by the beginning of the 13 season. Do they have one already? Hard to say at this point. But I digress. The main point i want to make is we need to keep the run D in perspective. It is still above average. Yes, teams looking at the Jet pass D, unless they can exploit lack of speed in the middle with a TE, were prone to running outside last year. But what really led to that 8-8 record was lack of scoring, too many turnovers on O, and especially the mediocre play of Mark Sanchez. Perspective is important.
