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Black Hawk, Colorado – A lot to get into from the Centennial State.
I asked Robert Saleh this question post-game. Perhaps some of you were wondering about this also, or maybe not:
Q) Is it tough having a rookie offensive coordinator and a rookie quarterback?
“You want to say it shouldn’t be tough,” Saleh said. “You do want to see growth, day in and day out, you want to see the entire offense, you want to see that growth, you want to see that communication, you want to see the precision as we go. I think we’ll see.”
That is about as candid an answer as you are going to get without throwing somebody under the bus.
It’s pretty clear from that answer, that he wants to LaFleur, who is a good friend of his, to start moving this offense, and the rookie QB, in the right direction.
Now, to cut them a little slack, not a lot, but a little, the last two weeks, the rookie QB, and rookie coordinator, faced two of the best defensive minds of the modern era – New England’s Bill Belichick and Denver’s Vic Fangio.
That is kind of tough for a rookie QB and coordinator right out of the box.
The schedule makers didn’t do the Jets any favors.
But still, even within the framework of a tough schedule over the first month (with Belichick disciple Mike Vrabel coming to town with Tennessee next week), there is stuff that needs to change, ASAP.
With Wilson, there is a lot you can get into from today, and we can get into more over the course of the week, but I want to get into a play, that might not be talked about that much, but is illustrative of one of the kid’s problems right now.
The Jets’ first series ended on an incomplete pass from Wilson to Elijah Moore on a deep out on the left sideline on third-and-five.
Moore was wide open. This should be an easy completion for about 15-20 yards, Moore short-armed it.
You can’t leave easy throws like this on the field and be successful. Playing quarterback in the NFL is too hard. You can’t miss layups like this, especially against a defensive mastermind like Fangio.
And this leads us to an issue with Wilson that isn’t being talked about enough. We can be critical of some of his receivers for not hauling in catchable balls, we can rip the offensive line, can criticize some of the play-call, but another big problem are his mechanics. There are too many throws off-target do to bad footwork and mechanics.
He could get away with some of these mechanical issues, like throwing of his backfoot, playing North Alabama and Western Kentucky, but it’s much harder to do that against NFL defenses where the throwing windows are a lot smaller.
But it might be hard to fix some of the mechanics issues during the season. There is too much going on right now. This might be more of an off-season project.
As for LaFleur, he needs to continue to work on more rookie-friendly play-calling. It’s great to bring the Shanahan offense to Florham Park, but he’s not calling plays for Aaron Rodgers, like his brother. He’s got to do more to create easy plays for the rookie. This isn’t a one-size-fit-all offense. You need to always be cognizant of who you are calling plays for. Kind of like when Adam Gase was calling plays for Sam Darnold from the Payton Manning playbook. Darnold isn’t Manning. Bottom line – LaFleur has got to do a better job calling plays for a raw rookie.
September 26, 2021
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