You have to mix it up on 1st down. Always. Invariably, defenses stack the box on 1st so you have to spread things out a bit if you want to be successful. I'd like to see more short passes and screens to Leon in the flats, some shovel passes, some dinks and dunks to Keller and Cotchery on 1st down, not just those runs up the gut we saw all day. Losing Mayo is huge as we should take advantage of them losing quickness on the edge. Run leon wide all game and see if they can stop us.
Losing Mayo means they'll lose a force in the middle of the field as well as their defensive signal caller. I know he's a sideline to sideline backer, but Adalius Thomas and Pierre Woods are the guys we need to worry about coming off the edge. They're going to play a lot of 4-3 against us, so we need to pound it up the middle - Gary Guyton is a very inexperienced player. If the interior offensive linemen can win the majority of the snaps, Richardson will be able to make it to the next level - he'll kill the undersized Guyton...Washington, Jones, and Greene should make it to the secondary a lot.
WTF - i knew he got hurt monday but wasn't able to follow up on his status...and forgive me for not following the dozens of threads pertaining to his injury. jil
...that was the entire point of my post - it's incredibly easy to find the answer to your question. MrE
Yeah, he was dominant in that second game. It will be a big plus for the Jets if he Mayo can't play on Sunday.
First down efficiency has to improve, I agree. But I also don't think the Pats' passing D is what it used to be. The secondary seems less capable.
Maybe I'm missing something but it looked to me like we came out running against Houston and Houston came out stacked against the run. (Un)Surprisingly our 5-6man line was unable to clear out the 8-9 guys in the middle of the field to allow TJ/Leon to run free. If we had tried lighting up the first quarter with a throwing game on first down with a rookie QB I (and probably many others) would be calling for Schotty's head, if not Rex's. Houston knew this. We adjusted after a few series of stalled drives and completed some passes, even attempted some on early downs. At lest we weren't running draw after draw on 3rd and long. I really don't expect much more than we saw. An attempt to establish a running game, then adjustments to find a successful offense.
