Winters wasn’t good last year, he only ended up with starts because of injury. He also isn’t starting this year. I’d hardly call it questionable to move on from his paycheck which was like $7.5 million. Signing Gore was not a big deal. The way Gase used him sucked but I’m not putting that on Douglas. And Kalil… was a bit of an overpay but it was a swing to try and improve the OL he walked into when hired after the draft. And Alex Lewis came over for a conditional 7th round pick… what do you really expect to get back with a 7th? The only things I’m pinning on him as clear mistakes at this point are not bringing back Anderson and re-signing Alex Lewis.
At this point of the season, there's little that JD can do. At this point, it's up to the CS and players to get their shit together. For starters, LaFleur needs to fix his play calling and stop being so predictable running the ball on 1st and 2nd down most of the time. He needs to mix in the pass more on those downs. More quick passes need to be called. Since this is supposedly an outside zone run scheme, LaFleur needs to actually call outside zone run plays rather than runs up the gut. He needs to help the rushing attack by his groupings, i.e., have his best blockers on the field more. Mims is a much better blocker than Moore, Berrios or Smith. Davis is a good blocker. Wesco or Kroft need to be on the field, not Griffin or Brown. He needs to help the passing attack by working on the RBs picking up or chipping blitzers/pass rushers. They were awful yesterday. I don't recall the Jets running a single screen pass or draw play yesterday to slow down the pass rush, and don't recall any quick slants, either, which is supposedly a staple of this offense. So the onus is on LaFleur, the OL Coach, the RB Coach, and the players to get it fixed, NOT JD.
It's not solely the moves in a vacuum it's counting on some of the pieces as viable players for this team. The Lewis trade wasn't bad. Hoping and praying for him to be a multi-year starter was. Winters may or may not have been good. But we had the worst offensive line in the league for back to back years. We needed as much help as possible. I don't think Kalil was a big deal in all honesty but it's still a black mark. He was trying to make something happen on short notice though which is good. Gore had no place on this roster. A bad roster already that should've been used to evaluate younger talent not stalwart them. Maybe we would've had a clue what we had at runningback going into this year's draft and what Perine was or wasn't.
