I agree with you about the Jets not having the horses to run a strictly "pass first" offense. When the Raiders did this with Gannon they had a wealth of talent on offense, including 2 pro bowlers on the offensive line and an excellent rushing/receiving threat at RB in Garner and of course 2 future HOF'ers at WR. Even if our running game isn't quite enough to keep the defense honest the play action seems to still be a part of the Jets passing attack and without staying commited to the running game you're going to see these plays get blown up as well.
So which story would you like to take as your final answer? He's done it before, so it isn't really an arguable point that he can't. BTW: Yeah, Brett Favre can throw 40 yards downfield off the wrong foot with his eyes closed. But how's that working out for him right now? (I'm a Favre fan, but come on, that was just silly.) Hail Mary passes are simply chuck and pray plays. They are usually unsuccessful. Even if the throw was another 15 yards downfield, there were MULTIPLE defenders waiting. It didn't matter who threw that ball, the game was already over.
There's a huge difference between not neglecting the running game and "establishing" the run. Establishing the run means running no matter how little yardage it gets you, and running a lot before you're willing to pass. Not neglecting the run means that while you're still mainly passing, you're running enough so that defenses don't tee off on your QB, and they have to still look for it. Establishing the run generally doesn't work against good teams and in the playoffs, whereas completely ignoring the run generally doesn't work either. But a pass first offense definitely does work. It doesn't have to be a strict percentage thing either. We want Chad to average about 30-35 passes a game, and we want to run it the rest of the time. We do not want Chad to pass 22 times a game, and run the rest of the time, which is usually what is meant be "establish the run." Teams that absolutely insist on running all the time generally won't do well, but football fans seemingly have bought into the myth that you need to run the ball. The run stats for winning teams are a bit misleading, generally they pass a lot to get a lead, and then they runt he ball a lot to run the clock out. Even then, even with the majority of the runs being just to kill the clock, there is still a healthy percentage of passing. That's ideally what we want to, get those leads early, let our defense tee off, use our run game to take off clock when we have a large lead late in the game. But before then, I think it's paramount that we pass to score. In this league, unless you have LT, running yardage doesn't really guarantee TDs. Do you guys really want to go back to the Herm days of run on first down, run on second down, draw on third? Or incomplete pass on third? It's too hard to just demand your QB convert third down passes and nothing else. What's wrong with pass, run, pass on a series, or run, pass, pass, etc? If the defense starts playing 5 men in the box, our running game will work anyway. In the past we played to run first, and we'd try to break the 8 men in the box, and we'd fail, and then we'd whine that it's because they don't respect the pass. Now we can finally force them to respect the pass, but we still have whining. Sorry for the longish post, but this is something that really boggles my mind sometimes.
Chad attempted 33 passes against TN and 37 against the Pats. He is calling audibles at the line, he can basically do what he wants. It seems like they are doing exactly what you want.
Big deal, if Graham dosent punt the ball 10 yards and set New England up with points we wouldn't have to have been throwing a hail mary in the first place. If your going to place blame place it in the right area's!
Yeah, they are. My post was in response to all the people that want to change what we're doing now, and instead turn us into a run first team, which I don't think works in the NFL. I think what we're doing now is how to win in the NFL. Sure we lose to the Patriots, but we were in the game, which is something that can't be said for the past few years. I don't want to go back to that. I want to improve our blocking and defense, I consider that the reason why we lost. I'm also willing to give Chad the pass for the first half as him adjusting to a good NFL defense again, although I'd like a bit more from him a bit earlier. A lot of playoff games only have one half of offense, since at the higher levels of play defenses tend to take over. Our defense needs to be a bit better, and we can't make mistakes on special teams. We definitely need improvement on offense, but right now I'm high on our offense. If our defense can be dominant, we are a very good team.
What he said. I think the run/pass balance has been good the first two games. Even when they're down and especially against a team like NE, the Jets can't just go out there and say "Ok, we're passing every down now!" or Chad is going to get teed off on. About the only playcalling sequence in the Pats game I would object to is right before they kicked the FG, with the QB sneak(which we know now Pennington audibled to) followed up with a Blaylock run. That put them in 3rd and long and Pennington got buried on that play.
I think if you go back to the Herm era we were always at the bottom of the league in the amount of plays we ran during a game. Against TN we passed 33 times and still ran 34 times. That's a lot of plays. That means TOP and rest for the D. Great teams stone people on D. To do that you need to keep them rested and off the field by running the ball and eating clock. The Rams lost a SB to the Pats because of their pass first O. The Bills team lost to the Giants for the same reason. Again the Bills were a much more talented team. It's more than running the ball to keep the D honest, it's about controlling the tempo of the game and squezing your opponents opportunities to score.
This is not a surprise. He probably couldn't make that throw in 2002. But like SJ hinted at, everything else he does is so great it really doesn't matter at this point. I had a bigger problem with the decision to throw it at that time. With about 15 seconds on the clock, they had time to try and move closer.