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While the most important thing for the Jet was the “W,” there are some things that need to improve coming out of their contest in Nashville against the Tennessee Titans.
Like, for instance, once thing you can’t do, especially with a quarterback who likes to run, is have your two ends run way past the QB rushing upfield, and that is what happened on a 21-yard scramble by Will Levis late in the third quarter.
You can’t do this.
If you rush way past the quarterback, you are essentially reducing your defense from 11 to nine guys.
And with quarterbacks coming up on their schedule like Josh Allen and Kyler Murray, this is what they are hoping you do – run past them . . .
While the Jets defense did a lot of good things in this game, perhaps their best player, didn’t have one of his better game, and that is Sauce Gardner.
On a third-and-five in the first quarter, Calvin Ridley beat Gardner on a crossing route for a gain of 15.
In the second quarter, Taj Boyd caught a 17-yard pass around the right seam in-between Gardner and Chuck Clark. And then on second-and-11, there was a screen right to Tony Pollard, and Sauce overran it, allowing about an extra six yards on an 11-yard gain.
Late second quarter, on first-and-10, DeAndre Hopkins beat Sauce on a crossing route for 10 yards.
Ridley caught 40-yard TD on Sauce and Clark down right side late third.
Look, it happens to the best of them. Expect a bounce-back game from a highly-motivated Gardner on Thursday night.
Aaron Rodgers is a master chess player. When you get him early in the game with your schemes, he usually figures out what you are doing and has a counter, and that is what you saw on the Jets mid-second quarter drive that tied the score at 7.
For the first quarter and a half, the Titans’ defense was stifling the Jets.
But Rodgers, on this TD drive, countered what they with doing with great aplomb, and marched the Jets down field on a 12-play 73 yard-drive, by not looking for home runs, but “taking the profits” and as they like to say in football.
One of the most important plays was early on, with the Titans blitzed on a third-and-eight, and Rodgers beautifully hit his hot read, Garret Wilson for an 8-yard gain. And then with all the attention being paid to Wilson and Breece Hall, he hit RB Braelon Allen for a gain of 11 on the left side. And then he found Wilson, who sat down in a soft spot in the zone for a 16-yard gain.
And the piece-de-resistance, a fake screen right to Hall, and then throw a screen left to Braelon Allen, who takes it in from the 12.
This was a classic case of a beautiful football mind figuring out what Tennessee was doing early, and adjusting to it . . .
Sometimes you have to be careful not putting too much stock in what guys do in the preseason.
Defensive end Takk McKinley is a great story of perseverance, but his great work in the summer in Jets camp and preseason games was against backup offensive tackles. In the first two games, against front-line starting tackles, he’s kind of been nondescript.
One play he would want back was when he bit hard on a fake handoff to Tony Pollard on the left side, allowing Calvin Ridley to take the right edge on a jet sweep off right tackle for a 10-yard touchdown.
The Jets could use Haason Reddick, but it would be a bad optic to cave to his demands just because the team suffered a tragic injury to another end. That is rewarding petulant behavior and will send the wrong message to other players in future contract disputes.
September 16, 2024
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