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A few different things to get into in our Friday Night Whispers. You could make a strong argument that Geno Smith . . .
is being dealt a little better hand than Ryan Fitzpatrick.
I’m not making any excuses for Ryan Fitzpatrick. Not at all, but you can make a strong argument that the Jets making the QB change when they did is giving Geno Smith a much better chance of succeeding than his Predecessor.
The Jets just finished up a stretch against Kansas City, Arizona, Seattle and Pittsburgh. Three of them on the road.
And now Geno Smith has Baltimore Ravens at home, and the winless Cleveland Browns on the road.
The Ravens are one of the most banged up teams in the league. They will be without 27 percent of the starter this week, including both star outside linebackers (Terrell Suggs and Elvis Dumervil), starting inside linebacker C.J. Mosley, cornerback Shareece Wright. So four defensive starters are out, and on offense guard Marshal Yanda and receiver Steve Smith are out. Joe Flacco has a shoulder injury. He should play, but you never know.
On paper, the next two games are much easier than the previous four.
So Geno catches a break here, and he needs to take advantage of that . . .
Todd Bowles was asked today why outside linebacker Lorenzo Mauldin isn’t playing more.
“When you’ve got four good d-linemen, you play your four good d-linemen first,” Bowles said.
How’s that working out?
Once again, why do Bowles and other defensive coaches view Steve McLendon has a player you have to get on the field so badly, you need to change your base defense?
Seems very odd to me.
Just as odd as playing Sheldon Richardson as a linebacker half the time.
Why is Todd staying with this approach? Is it working? They are 1-5, hardly getting a pass rush, and have given up some big runs.
And like I mentioned yesterday, runners are taking the corner too much.
A lot of strange decisions this year in Florham Park.
And obviously a lot of them aren’t working . . .
Smart move by the Jets new PR chief Eric Gelfand.
I’m not sure if all of you saw this, but ESPN’s Rich Cimini got an exclusive interview with Bowles this week, and the thrust of the feature was about his work ethic. In the story, it was mentioned the Bowles gets into the office at 4:30 am.
The reason the timing of this was smart is that there are a lot of people questioning the coach now, with the Jets at 1-5 in the midst of a four-game losing streak. All the games have essentially been blowout losses.
So this story showed how hard Bowles is working to fix this mess.
I’m not saying this story is going to win over all of Bowles critics, but to give Cimini this access, and get this story out there, is good from a PR strategy standpoint.
Jets have been getting a lot of bad PR recently.
October 21, 2016
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