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East Rutherford – A few things to get into following the Jets loss to the Giants in the Snoopy Bowl . . .
Here is my assessment of Sam Darnold tonight.
Looks like he’s going to be excellent, but he’s not ready to start Week One.
He did enough tonight to show that he should be fine in time, but to ask him to start Week One,on the road, in Detroit, against a Matt Patricia defense is a tall order.
Remember, he’s never played an NFL game in a loud road venue. The Jets played at Washington last week, but there was little crowd noise.
Jeremy Bates is smart. He’s bringing Darnold along just right, with a lot of confidence building play calling, with a lot of short stuff.
On the Terrell Pryor TD pass – it was a simple cross shallow cross where Pyror crossed right in front of the quarterback wheelhouse -easy throw, easy catch TD.
So my verdict – will be very good, but shouldn’t start Week One.
For goodness sake, the guy just turned 21, he started just two years at USC. The Jets have him locked up for five years – four-year contract with a fifth-year team option.
What is the rush? . . .
The two teams tonight were playing basically the same defense.
Giants defensive coordinator James Bettcher was an assistant under Todd Bowles in Arizona . . .
Ereck Flowers has been under fire with the Giants. He didn’t work out at left tackle his first two years and now he’s
playing right tackle. He looked very good tonight. The Jets got no pass rush pressure from his side tonight, and he drew an illegal hands to the face penalty on a Jets pass rusher.
Either he has improved or great deal, or this is illustrative of the Jets lack of an edge rush.
I think it’s a little bit of both . . .
And this gets me to the Jets’ edge-rush. It was invisible tonight.
They need to either make a trade for an edge rusher, or start getting some other guys involved.
With all due respect to Jordan Jenkins and Josh Martin, neither has made much of an impact as a rusher. Todd, change things up a little bit. This isn’t working.
And the other problems with their lack of a pass rush is it’s exposing their pass defense, which has to hold up too long, and had some issues tonight.
I asked Todd Bowles after the game about the lack of a pass rush hurting the passing game, and he totally disagreed.
He basically disagrees with almost every premise I pose in questions.
I asked him about Lachlan Edwards punt straight down the middle of the field low contributing to a punt return for a touchdown tonight being a problem, just like it was against the Carolina Panthers last year. He blamed the coverage.
Jets fans can only hope that Bowles realizes these problems behind the scenes, and just shoots me down publicly, and doesn’t ignore these issues behind the scenes . . .
Henry Anderson drew two holding calls on Giants defensive linemen tonight. Very good technician . . .
Avery Williamson (pictured above), who has superb instincts, led the Jets with nine tackles tonight.
August 24, 2018
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