In the second half of the Jets win over San Diego, it seems like Gang Green took a step in the right direction.
“If we play like that we’re going to be tough to beat,” Rex Ryan said. “There is no doubt. You play defense like that, they were 1-of-7 on third down (in the second half), and this is the number one third down offense in football. That’ll help you. You get the takeaways, you get pressure on the quarterback and you do a good job stopping the run, that’s what we expect from that defense.”
What about the offense?
“The way we controlled the ball, controlled the line of scrimmage, I think bodes really well for us,” Ryan said. “And we’re doing a good job in the red zone. One thing that we’ve improved on and we targeted in the offseason was doing a better job in the red zone. I don’t know about it statistically, it just feels to me like we’re much better in the red zone than we’ve been in the past.”
One area Rex is particularly happy about is his team’s third down defense.
“We [are] the number one third-down defense in the league, which I always think gets lost, because people are saying, ‘This defense is not the same.’ Well, this defense is pretty good.”
But the defense does need to improve against the run.
“We’ve given up more rushing yards than we’d like to, we’ve obviously given up some huge runs on the perimeter, and that’s still something that we have to get better at.”
