Before I give my opinion on yesterday's preseason game (I know everyone is waiting with such excitement .... sarcasm ) I want to make a comment about something I noticed on the board. It appears that Jets fans react to the result of a Jets game in either one way or the other. 1. The Jets lose a game - post are about how this is quite possibly the worst Jets team they have ever seen, someone must be held accountable and fired. 2. The Jets win a game - a positive Jets post is put up and then the comments on the post usually read something along the line of. Don't get to excited. It was just one game. You think we just won the super bowl. I could go on but I think you get the idea. The reason I bring this up is why do you think it is so that if the Jets win then most people will not get really excited about it. However, if the Jets lose most people are ready to jump of the bridge. On to game thoughts...... The Jets got off to a slow start and still faltered once they got into opponents territory. I think part of this was the fact that only Clemens is a real leader back there at QB (I am not counting Chad since he didn't play) The O-line looks better than the week before. I think this O-line may already be better than last years O-line. Consequently the Jets running game looked much better and I believe the Jets rushed for over 200 yards. Ramsey should go. Honestly, Brooks looks better than him in all assets with the exception of blocking, great block by Ramsey on the reverse. The 1st team D looks very good. The back ups with a few exceptions (Tui, Cassel, Schlegel) looks awful. However, I wouldn't expect young team to be that deep so its understandable IMO. Our specials teams look very good. Our kick return looks like it is returning to dominant form like it was when Morton returned kicks. Big Ben had a off night but I think that the Jets were working on some things in the punting game. Such as, coffin kicking and possible trick plays i.e Ben running with the ball. Nugent looks solid but I want to see him kick a deep field goal in a game situation before the preseason is over. Also I felt the onside kick should have been recovered by the Jets. The young kids on the team look like they could be the play makers our offense is looking for. Brad Smith looks like a very exciting player and I look forward to seeing him play more this preseason. He can catch the ball on the line of scrimmage and then go pick up 8 on third down. All and all I would say the Jets looked much better this week and that's what you need in the preseason. A team must get better ever week and this week I think they have gotten much better. Kudos to the coaching staff. As always let me hear your thoughts and comments.
8094.....Points #1 & #2.....That's life on a message board, some people over-react and sit on their brains, which cut-off their oxygen supply!!!!!
Honestly I was shocked to see the Jets score more than 10 points against the Redskins. I'm not going to jump on the bandwagon right away and say Mangini is our saviour, but at the same time I was very surprised that the team played like that and the O-line actually protected the QB. Ramsey is not the answer for Starter or Backup. Give the job to Bollinger for Back up. He looked pretty good and very comfortable. Chad................might be our starter for now & I say that loosly. Clemens might be the future QB this team needs. Like I said pleasently surprised and if somehow this team gets more than 5 wins this year, it's golden. Someone told me expect 8-8 this year, that's a pipe dream.
i know one with the insertion of big Clement the oline run blocking improved dramaticaly. now im not saying its all because of him. but it had to play some part in the improvement.. maybe because he has the huge frame to just maul over defenders
It was great to see the offense keep the ball for 23 consecutive plays. That hasn't happened much in recent memory. But you dont have the ball for 23 plays in a row if you are making 20+ yrd pass plays. We need to do that or it's going to be a long season.
The New England system dumps the ball off more than Paul Hackett. The only real difference between the west coast we've been looking at the last 5 years and the New England system is the lack of draws on 3rd down due to the number of 3 and 4 receiver sets on obvious passing downs. Personally I like the New England system better. It gets tedious watching 3rd and 9 draws all the time. I much prefer to see the defense spread out by the multi-receiver sets because I think that's a more effective approach to 3rd and long. Now we just need to see if we have the QB to trigger the offense.
Agreed we could use speed at WR. But we could use some help just about anywhere. I think with the MB ranting, it's a way of relieving frustration. I do it on occasion, but then some take their anger out on other members sometimes. That's not cool.
I'm actually sorta pleased with the system so far.. The O just needs to execute better in crunch time. Alot of long drives so far, problem is ther are not finishing those drives with Tds..
My thoughts from this weekend are along the lines of coaching. The last guy we had..when something went wrong he would just stand there with an amazed look on his face and do nothing. Remember Jack Pardee? Same look. This guy, Mangini, he immediately knows what went wrong and starts yelling at those responsible. He doesn't smile either when we score. He's along the lines of a Bobby Knight, Parcells, Weiss....tough guys. I like it. I think the team will play hard and be better conditioned. We just need to get lucky in the draft the next few years, that's all.
No one mentioned him, so I will. Our first team defense has played great in both preseason games(I know it is preseason, so it doesn't count) but the leader of the defense has been Bryan Thomas. That horrible first round pick who Herman couldn't motivate to get a sack is flying all over the field and making solid tackles and getting pressure on teh QB. He looks great at OLB in my opinion.
I think they were trying to emphasize improvment in the run game with the Skins outing. They wanted their o-line to block better and got that. I don't think you can judge the passing game in two pre-season outings. As I've watched other pre-season games on NBC/ESPN/NFL Network, most teams are keeping their offense very vanilla, and I think the Jets are the same. They'll probably open it up more against the Giants, but you can't assume what we saw against the Skins/Bucs is what we'll see in the season.
There are a lot of positives to take out of pre-season so far. Based on what I've seen/heard, I don't think this team is going to be as bad as I had thought they would be before training camp started. With our schedule, I see 8-8 as a reasonable outcome. Yeah it's only preseason and it's definitely possible that I have some green sunglasses on but here are my thoughts. A lot of my opinions are based on what I've read from the knowledgeable posters on this site. Positives: 1) Overall the coaching staff has been impressive so far. They seem to have the attitude, knowledge, work ethic, and experience to be winners in this league. They also seem to honestly be giving everyone a fair chance to win the job which really hasn't happened in the past 4 years. 2) The FO seems to be making good decisions. 3) The rookies have been impressive. The linemen are already upgrades from last season, and we'll have them for at least 4 years. The skill guys have shown nice sparks. I really liked what I saw out of Leon Washington and Kellen Clemens when they got the ball. We seem to have a lot of young talent. 4) The transition to the 3-4 seems to be going well despite the fact that we don't have a true 3-4 NT. Yes, we got torn up on the ground by TB but that was mainly with the backups and the playcalling was more vanilla than week 2. I suppose it's possible that Washington was reluctant to exploit a weakness pointed out by TB in the first preseason game because it's only preseason. I'm going to look at it positively and assume we'll be OK with this D this year. When we started mixing it up with the blitzes, it seemed like a strong D. I would still feel much better if we signed Grady Jackson. The secondary appears to be slighty above average as a whole with the potential to be better. 5) Both return teams on special teams seem to be in mid-season form with real explosiveness. This WILL win us at least one game this season. 6) Offensively we've done an excellent job with ball control and moving the ball down the field. Clock management has also been way better, though it would be hard to not improve on this. Negatives: 1) No killer instinct. With the ball-control, clock eating drives we've seen thus far, if our offense could finish half the drives we've ran we'd have a shot at winning most games. When we get close to the red-zone bad things are happening. - penalties, way too many false starts - turnovers - the play calling seems to become too conservative, we don't have a dominant running game or O-line and they don't seem to want to try and run into a short field. Penny can't zip the ball into the small spots, Bolly looks at one guy and if he's not open runs, and Ramsey is just a clown. Clemens is the only one who's thrown a TD pass so far, he has the arm to zip it into the tight spots and the moxy to find the receiver while being chased. - At the end of the skins game we were playing not to lose. Run up the middle for two yards twice, then throw the pass out of bounds if the first read isn't wide open. I don't mind playing conservative in this spot but when you've got the guy down and the knife to his throat, don't be afraid to cut it because he might fight back. If you don't cut it, he WILL fight back. I really hope that shotty isn't going to be a big wuss with his play calling like his father. It's especially disturbing that this is a pre-season game we're talking about and he seemed afraid to go for the kill. It's a good thing Ben Graham had some nice punts in the final minutes. 2) Need better blocking out of our RB's and TE's. I believe this would have a major impact on finishing drives. 3) Mangini won't tell the media fascinating stories about his childhood or give them information about the gameplan for the next opponent. As fans we resent this type of behavior. 4) I still think a giant NT who demands a double team is missing.
