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Some things I find a little odd . . .
Todd Bowles either has a blindspot or I’m missing something.
He clearly doesn’t like replacing starters in the lineup. He is unbelievably loyal.
And I’m not just talking about performance related moves, though that can be an issue at times.
Jets center Spencer Long has a finger injury on his right hand, his snapping hand, that is impacting his shotgun snaps. They are all over the place, and one contributed to a fumble on a running play where the snap was high and it messed up the timing of the hand-off.
With this continually happening, why not use the more-than-capable backup center, Jon Harrison?
I’m not saying that Harrison is better than Long, but he’s very solid, and has a healthy snapping hand?
Last year, Brian Winters played two months with a torn abdomen which occurred in Week Two in Oakland.
“Oh, it was horrendous,” he this past off-season. “I wouldn’t give that pain to even my worst enemy. It was something that was very tough and hurtful, from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed. Not only when I was doing stuff. Just walking in general was painful.”
Why would you play a guy two months who has trouble walking?
The Jets had three players in reserve at guard last year, Dakota Dozier, Harrison and Brent Qvale, all they liked enough to re-sign this off-season.
Look, Winters is tough as heck for playing through that, but how is it good for the team to have a guy out there for two months with limited mobility?
Coach Bowles has a really hard time replacing starters.
He has a tremendous dedication to his named starters . . .
Maybe one day somebody will tell me why Nate Shepherd is starting ahead of Henry Anderson.
Early in the fourth quarter of the Jets-Vikings game, Minnesota’s Latavius Murray had a 38-yard TD run up the middle. The initial hole was right at Shepherd who was locked up by center Pat Elfein.
I think Shephard has a lot of potential, but for some reason was viewed as instant coffee by the Jets’ brass when he was a major project.
He was put into the starting lineup in the spring, and they never looked back.
And you know what I said about the intense dedication to starters.
If I owned the team, I would ask the coach point blank – “Why is Shephard starting ahead of Anderson?”
By the way, a couple of other odd things about that long TD-run.
First off, for some reason Leonard Williams rushed up field like he was going for the QB, and honestly, I didn’t see a play-fake here. So he took himself out of the play. Also, Darron Lee, left a gaping hole by over-committing to the left side into a gap the runner didn’t use. Lee’s spacing on this play was far from ideal.
A cynic would wonder if he didn’t want to deal with 6-3, 230-pound Murray one-on-one, so he over-committed a gap away from him, but I’m not going to go there. That’s unfair to assume.
October 22, 2018
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