Cool chart. The argument is not that shotgun is bad. Some of the best offenses in history ran out of a shotgun base. The argument would be is it the right base formation for the Jets? Let's look at the Eagles since they were very capable of putting up points and were #1 from the gun. This article breaks down Foles' passing data: http://www.bleedinggreennation.com/...-quarterback-tendencies-eagles-pff-data-stats Maybe someone smarter can give better insight from that data but one thing that stands out like a sore thumb is the very high amount of screen passes. If we are gonna be in the gun so much we need to do this. We have the personnel now. Running draw plays that don't surprise anybody from 5 yards deep all the time is not gonna cut it. Like Rivers, Manning, Brady - QB's that have run high powered offenses almost exclusively out of the gun - Foles was very accurate and great with the pre-snap. Geno is just not on that level and probably never will be. He is however more mobile. Spread option from a shallow gun mixed with some pistol formations is what I'd like to see more of rather than forcing the WCO.
Michael Vick was in the shotgun 65% of the time in 2010 and 2011. Just saying. Donovan McNabb spent more than 60% of his career in the shotgun. That's just the Andy Reid/Marty Mornhinweg WCO. They like the shotgun. Geno is going to be in the shotgun a lot of the time. The fact that Geno had a lot of experience in the shotgun at WVU is probably one of the things that Marty Mornhinweg liked about him. That he had mobility was a big plus also no doubt.
I disagree with much of your post. The secondary is not the only problem with the D by any stretch of the imagination. To begin with everyone knows Rex's blitzes by now, and the Jets can't come up with consistent pressure on opposing QBs. They need a real pass rushing OLB before they can even begin to become an "elite" D. There's no doubt the secondary needs to improve, but it isn't the only issue, and maybe not even the greatest problem. A number of teams win with average CBs when they have a great pass rush. The Panthers had a one of the league's best defenses last year and their secondary for much of the season was comprised of rookies and substitutes as several of their starters went down with injuries. They got great pressure on opposing QBs and had ball-hawking DBs, something the Jets haven't had in a long time. Geno is not a bad QB and to say that he's not particularly accurate is flat out wrong. I think that's ridiculous. He is greatly improved from last season, in spite of both the OL and WR corps still being shaky. His OC and HC don't help much, either. His HC knows nothing about offense or how to manage the clock, and both the HC and OC think the Wildcat is a valid part of the offense. While his OC is better than any OC the Jets have had in a long time, that's not saying much. The Jets have had some of the worst OCs in the history of the NFL over the last 10 years or so. His play calling is highly questionable at times. I'm not sure that any young QB could flourish in such a situation. Instead of being helped and supported, he's having to overcome a lot while he's learning and developing.
1. The biggest problem on Jets D is a lack of talent in the second line. Ever since Mangini took over, Jets didn't have anyone to apply pressure on QB consistently. [That was John "I sprained my vagina" Abraham. Long time ago, my friends.] Unless Jets get a Bruce Smith clone in DL, they will need an OLB to get to the QB - both OLBs should be able to get to the QB. On top of that, both ILBs should be able to float over the shallow zone and take away the passing lane. I don't know if current Jets LB corp is capable of that. 2. Jets should do very well to draft another CB, preferably with early pick, come the draft time. 3. Jets need to get a better OLs. It will take a few years of investments. Mangold and Ferguson are both getting up there in ages. 4. Also, Jets should get better LB coach and OL coach. 5. This is just my imagination; I am thinking, maybe Jets offense could benefit a lot by converting into a whole pistol offense. What do you guys think?
I think you have missed the whole point made in this thread. The problem is not using the shotgun a large percentage of time for most teams. Obviously the Eagles are successful with it (the hiccups they've had so far have to do with what is likely some short term abberrational inaccuracy by Foles - which is the whole point I intend to make here). The problem is not PASSING out of the shotgun with an accurate Qb. The problem is that running out of the shotgun, more or less exclusively, takes away from the effectiveness of the WCO. Couple the foregoing point with a Qb who is apparently incapable of being effective passing the ball from behind center, and opponents realize when such a Qb DOES go behind center, the play is almost certainly going to be a run. Add in that Smith really is not accurate. Not to digress here but I was very hopeful we would see more screen passes by adding Johnson. Well we did see some of that in the Oakland game, and it was encouraging. But the screen the Jets tried to Johnson against GB went for no gain. I am guessing the CS saw what GB was doing to take that away, and that's why we didn't see more of it later. Smith may be an improvement over the awful Sanchez with the screen pass. But he's still not accurate by NFL standards. Finally as I have been noting the ypc Smith has been able to obtain has been consistently declining since the Oakland game last year. His mobility is less and less of a factor. Add it all up and opponents have a significant edge preparing for the Jets O because Smith is largely ineffective behind center.
You'd think the Jets are 0-2 with two blowout losses by reading some of the posts here. Jets have some major flaws for sure. That secondary is brutal right now. McDougle and Milliner getting hurt was a major setback. I think AA has the potential to be a legitimate CB. But Walls is mediocre at best, and Milliner is clearly still hurting (or rusty). Pryor is struggling in coverage and knowing where to be, that will come in time. Landry is solid. Front seven is damn good. Coples and Demario Davis are both having great years IMO. Wilkerson/Richardson/Harrison are gonna do their thing. I think the secondary is only going to get better (since they really cant get worse). Milliner is going to get healthier, Allen is going to continue to improve as a CB. Offense is actually looking pretty good. While not a world beater, Geno looks immensley better than last season. He's making plays, and making less mistakes. He's picking good spots to run and is using it to convert 3rd downs. He's a little late on throws for sure, but he's clearly improved. Running game will be among the five best in football by the end of the year. As time goes on I'd imagine MM will realize that Ivory runs between the tackles, Johnson outside, and Powell both. I'm hoping with each passing week the coaching staff gets to know their personnel a bit better. The way I look at it, is the Jets are right where we expected them to be. We expected them to be 1-1 after 2 weeks. The way we lost stings for sure, but the Jets went into GB and took them to the limit in their home opener. I thought the game was very poorly officiated, and if not for a stupid TO call by MM/Richardson, the game is tied with 2 minutes left. I'd be very interested to see how the game would turn out if we didnt put Milliner in. He was clearly hurt and Rodgers picked up a lot of his yardage against him. Either way I'm encouraged with where this team is headed.
Having never played QB before myself, I have to assume you have a significantly better pre-snap view of the defense in the shotgun formation. It must also make it easier for pass-rushers to plan their trajectory towards the QB, since he is generally in the same place the whole time, whereas under center the pass-rushers have to estimate how many steps until the QB's drop finishes. As someone stated before, the defense can see the path of the running back more clearly as well in a shotgun formation. There are pro's and cons to both, and since Geno is more used to a shotgun based offense, it makes sense that early in his second year they operate most of their plays that way. I have no doubt that as he continues to develop, they will work in more snaps under center because of the advantages it provides. Further growth in chemistry between Geno and his receivers can only help as well. Offseason training is great, but in game experience is what QB-receiver connections need.
That's the advantage of shotgun formation. It gives the QB better view of defense, gets the ball out of the QB's hand faster [since he's already established back] and gives the defense less time for more grounds to sack a QB. The only disadvantage is, shotgun gives away the intention - it is predominantly a passing formation. Hence my suggestion for pistol.
You can run traps, counters, draws and any number of sweeps, reverses and option plays out of the shotgun. Marty Mornhinweg is a master of doing exactly that. It's what the WCO out of the shotgun depends upon. We just didn't do enough of that on Sunday. We did it early and were successful and then we mostly stopped doing it. Maybe there was a reason we stopped that we don't know about. Hopefully in future we'll keep spreading the defense out with plays outside the tackles, screen passes, etc. If we'd done more of that on Sunday we might have gotten a better result. MM really does know what he's doing. He had an off-day on Sunday, that's all it was.
The problem with shotgun is, it deprives the offense with any semblance of power runs. All you can get are either sweep, stretch run or zone read. Unless it's a draw type runs [where RB gets hand off then looks for the hole] runs in shotgun are almost always sideways. It's pretty simple concept if you think about it; in a traditional I formation or pistol, rusher can gain forward momentum while taking hand off. In shotgun, you can't. [Try it as you may. If you succeed, see if you can get a Nobel prize out of it.] So if the defense is quick enough, then these sideways runs are stuffed in no time. It is not like Geno is well-established runner out of zone read. Nor is he a well-established QB that would make the defense fear the aerial attack. When I saw Jets run successfully, I didn't see the Jets rushing out of shotgun all that much in general; that's for Broncos and Patriots. When Jets got the run game going, Geno was usually taking snap from under the center. I was merely suggesting, why not establish pistol, as that incorporates power concepts into the shotgun runs. Geno is not too good at taking snaps from under the center anyway, so that was where my line of thought came from.
Look, I know you like to disagree with me on almost everything but hear me out... I'm trying to be realistic with how we can most easily become a truly dominant D. We haven't had a legit pass rushing OLB in 10 years. They're obviously not easy to come by. We've seen how good the D can be. When we were dominant we had: elite CB (veterans), good DL (veterans, great run defense, no QB pressure), average linebackers (veterans), average safeties (veterans). here's the roster from 2009 when we were rated #1 (its the opening day one so its a little off) http://www.footballdb.com/teams/nfl/new-york-jets/roster/2009?sort=pos Now we are average, we have: poor CB play (young), elite DL (young, elite run defense, good pressure), average linebackers (young), average safeties (young) here's the current roster http://www.footballdb.com/teams/nfl/new-york-jets/roster Obviously Rex's schemes took the AFC by storm, but the Jets still fielded top 5 overall defenses the next two years so the notion that teams have adjusted to us and that Rex's schemes have lost their luster is not true. The decline in the D was from erosion of roster talent, failure to replace players. So what's the difference between 2009 and today? The Line has vastly improved of course. Our safety play is performing at about the same level but the players are now young and they will get much better than their predecessors. I'd argue that linebackers are improved. In '09 at ILB we had Scott, Harris (Fowler, Cummings). Scott was one of my favorite Jets ever and a great leader but he was in the twilight of his career here. Athletically speaking, Davis is definitely an upgrade. Harris is still here, his play clearly got better from the improved D line, but we need to upgrade there and we already have his replacements in the wing. Jeremiah George is going to be a tackling machine for us when he is ready and we may have struck gold with UDFA AJ Edds. Outside we had Pace, Thomas, (Gholston, Murrel, Westerman). Babin (and Barnes if he comes back healthy) is better than anyone on that list and Coples is already a better pass rusher than anyone we've had since Abraham. Babin and Barnes are placeholders but I have high hopes for Trevor Reilly, like George he had high college metric scores, which along with his good showing in camp, is a very encouraging sign. So that leaves us with the difference being the piss poor CB play. Milliner getting healthy and playing well is going to boost this D by leaps and bounds. Then adding a solid CB2 on the other side next year will stabilize everything. We wont be elite there like we were with Revis, but as I've argued above, you can see we are improved everywhere else which should more than equalize the downgrade at CB. Now, I agree that getting an elite pass rushing OLB would be amazing for this team and should be a high priority. However, getting one has been highly elusive for us. The only formidable OLB in FA next year is Vontaze Burfict. Likely we need to find our elite OLB in the draft which may not be possible next year. The point that this whole post has been leading up to is that the fastest way to becoming a complete and dominant defense again is to simply shore up the cornerbacks. We have proven that we can field a top 5 defense without an elite OLB. We clearly cannot do that without solid corners. --- As for Geno, he is much improved. I've said this many times on here. That's really nice but we gotta temper the excitement. He was completely horrid last year. Improving from that is not exactly brag-worthy. Compared to NFL standards of what it takes to be a successful starting QB, he is definitely still more of bad QB right now than he is a good one. Please watch game tape of Phillip Rivers and then watch tape of Geno. Rivers is a great QB. Geno will never be on that level, ever. Please watch a game tape of Andy Dalton or Russell Wilson and then watch Geno's tape. They are good QB's. Geno looks like a scrub in comparison. Take out the fact that they have better teams around them. Look at their technique, look at their decision making, look at how they decipher the defensive alignments, look at their ball placement and how they lead receivers. Enduring sub-par QB play for years in the hopes that Geno will slowly develop into an adequate QB is not gonna fly, the NFL operates too fast nowadays. He's got this year to become serviceable and show that he has the upside to become a playoff QB. If not then we need to draft his successor before it becomes another Mark Sanchez situation. I definitely concede that he had a very tough situation to enter into last year. My criticism of him comes from things that are in his control - footwork, decision making, accuracy. Rex Ryan took us to back to back AFCCG in his first two years as HC. That's an historic feat, especially so considering the mediocre talent of the teams. I really don't care if he sucks at clock management or likes the wildcat because he's proven he's a Superbowl caliber coach. And Marty is one of the better OC's in the league. Watch Todd Haley or Gary Kubiak call a game and you will thank God that we have Marty. The QB is the most important position in the game. We've had bottom-of-the-barrel QB performances for the last 5 years. If you're gonna blame the coaches, blame them for who they drafted.
This thread is a few weeks too premature. Give the team a few more weeks to see if they have the labels you are giving them. Allowing 300+ yards to Aaron Rodgers doesn't mean you have a terrible secondary. And Geno and the passing game has actually looked pretty good. Going by numbers means little to me. If the stats stay true by Week 8, then yeah, good points.
What concerns me is, Geno still features these "no, no, no, no..... NO!!!!" moments, a la Sanchez. Jets offense doesn't need a hero. It just needs a game manager that will take care of the offense. It's not even like he's lighting up the scoreboard either. It's just plain dumb mistakes. P.S. About that 'vast improvement' rant; can you go 'more' south from the south pole? Regardless of which direction you take, once you start moving, you'd have moved up north from the previous spot, which is the south pole. [Unless you shoot yourself into the air, then out of the space - or, in layman's term, you fall out of the Earth. Just figuratively speaking, so disregard these.]
Great post. We pretty much see eye to eye here, whether you like it or not. Heh. Brad's not going to like your point about the CB's, but he'll get over it. I know you did not get too far into the particulars about Smith's deficiencies, other than the mentions of footwork, etc.. But I do think other discussions on this thread regarding his difficulties behind center and what the net result is from the advantage that gives opponents is at the heart of what you, me and other skeptics see as the reasons to be less than cheerful about him. Back to the CB issue - we will likely see more of the problems here in the coming weeks, unfortunately. I can hope all I want that we will not, but I frankly think that is unrealistic, and it is what it is. I have been encouraged by the improved play of Coples and Davis, two keys to the future for this D. It is premature to say whether Pryor will play up to his draft status, but we can probably expect some improvement in safety play as the year goes on. But I don't think those factors will be enough to compensate for the weakness at Cb. It remains the biggest indictment of Idzik's work to date that he did not get better corners.
All young QB's have these moments. It's just part of their orientation to the NFL. Tom Brady threw 2 picks against the Browns down the stretch in 2001 including a pick 6 that gave the Browns an early lead. The Pats won anyway because they had the talent to cover up for Brady's rookie mistakes. The next week he threw a pick early on in a game that wound up 12-9 Pats at the end. His team picked him up. In the playoff game against Oakland he was picked off early with the Raiders already up 7-0. He lost possession of the football in the backfield 3 times during the game and got bailed out each time, with two being recovered by the Pats - one by him, and the third turning into the most controversial play of all time when the play was ruled an incomplete pass despite the fact that Brady was clearly not throwing the ball at the time it occurred. You freaking pump fake and the ball comes out on the backward motion after contact and it should be a fumble. The point here is not that Geno Smith is going to be Tom Brady because the odds on that are really slim. The point is that he's a lot like Tom Brady was in 2001 and 2002. He doesn't have enough experience yet to know what he can get away with and what he can't and the game has not completely slowed down for him yet. The Pats had a 4 game losing streak early in 2002 in which Brady turned the ball over 9 times. That losing streak was the reason the Pats didn't make the playoffs in 2002. That and the late loss to the Jets where Brady played very poorly. The idea that Geno Smith is unique in terms of the NO, no, no, moments is misguided. He's like EVERY other young QB in terms of those moments. They all had them and they all cost their teams games. Well, there was one exception. The Steelers put Ben Roethlisberger in an ironclad box his first two seasons and as a result of that they lost very few games due to his play. They're one of the few teams in the NFL that could pull this off because the box wasn't just the coaching staff. Everybody in that locker room knew what the deal was and no amount of wishing on Big Ben's part was going to make the handcuffs come off.
Once again this is a straw man kind of argument. It pretends that the concerns about Smith are limited to the oh, no! moments. There are also real concerns as noted here about his fundamental flaws, from problems with footwork to accuracy to being behind center. Ftr I do not think it impossible for him to overcome these problems. But they remain in total a rather large number, and the likelihood he can overcome enough of them to become an average NFL Qb is, in my humble opinion, less than likely.
