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The Jets are going to Canton this summer . . .
to play in the Hall-of-Fame game against the Cleveland Browns.
The game will kick off Thursday, Aug. 3 at 8 p.m. ET at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium to begin Enshrinement Week.
But let’s not put the team in Canton just yet.
Yes, Aaron Rodgers is now their QB, but they have a lot of work to do, not just getting on the same page with his new teammates, but they have plenty to fix from last year. Rodgers can’t fix everything.
There is a lot of hype around this team right now, including in-house social media stuff.
There is nothing wrong with people being excited, but hype isn’t going to win them any games.
Today they made an important move to help fix something that was a problem last year, especially during their six-game losing streak to end the season, their run defense: They officially signed 6-3, 330-pound nose tackle Al Woods.
This should help them to a degree fix their leaky run defense up the middle.
There are so many people pushing the narrative the Rodgers can come in and lift the offense to compliment an already really good defense.
Was it a really good defense last year?
They were decent, but they played a lot of bad or average quarterbacks. Hey, you can only play who is on your schedule, but they didn’t exactly play a murder’s row of quarterbacks.
Not only do they need to fix their run defense, and Woods should help, but they must figure out a way to get better pass coverage from their linebackers and safeties. It’s well-documented their starting cornerback combination of D.J. Reed and Sauce Gardner, is one of the NFL’s best, but the safety and linebacker coverage last year was pedestrian at best.
That must be fixed, especially with all the good tight ends in the AFC East, like Dawson Knox and Dalton Kincaid in Buffalo and Mike Gesicki and Hunter Henry in New England.
And getting back to the run defense, they need to set better edges more consistently. Obviously not all the run defense issues were up the middle. Quite a few big runs came off tackle where ends didn’t set ideal edges.
Jermaine Johnson and others need to set harder edges more consistently.
So with the schedule coming out, and all the glitter connected to the Jets being on myriad primetime games, the Jets players can’t too immersed in all this schedule stuff and the off-the-charts hype about this team right now.
They have to take Nick Saban’s favorite approach – process thinking. Just focus on their next rep at OTA’s or their next bench press in the weight room.
During worry about some primetime game down the road.
It’s up to Robert Saleh to keep his team focused on the current job at hand, and that is getting better every day in the off-season workouts.
This is especially important with young players, and that includes Gardner, a rising star. Don’t pat him on the back too much.
And don’t put this team in Canton just yet, fellas.
They have a ton of work to do to get where they want to go, and I mean a ton.
May 11, 2023
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