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I will get into the roster moves tomorrow once the politics are done.
If you think these teams keep the best 53 all based on merit, I have some swamp land in Jersey to sell you.
But today, I want to get into the Herculean task the Jets’ offensive line faces traveling to San Francisco in Week 1.
Can you imagine facing perhaps the game’s best pass rusher, Nick Bosa, after not playing in preseason games?
Bill Parcells was a big believer in getting offensive linemen work in preseason games.
“Offensive linemen need to spar,” Parcells used to say, using a boxing reference.
I did not just say a tough challenge for one offensive lineman, just left tackle Tyron Smith, because Bosa moves around a lot.
“We want to move Nick around as much as possible,” said DeMeco Ryans, the former DC in San Francisco and now the head coach in Houston in 2022. “We understand how teams will try to game plan for him. He probably gets double-teamed more than anybody I’ve ever seen, so for us as coaches, it is on us to move him around and put him in positions to be successful.”
The 49ers are still running the same system as when Ryans was there, so the moving around of this player continues.
“He picks and chooses where he wants to line up,” said one former 49ers teammate.
So they look for weak spots and try to exploit them with a player who has averaged 14.8 sacks in the last three years.
Where are the weak spots, maybe there aren’t any, but since nobody played in the preseason, it’s hard to say.
The places we assume Bosa will line up the most are over the tackles, and veterans Tyron Smith (left tackle) and Morgan Moses (right tackle), are both 33, and did know real “sparring” this summer in real tackle football games.
Look, it could go great for the Jets. I have no idea, but it will fascinating to watch how a starting offensive line that didn’t play in the preseason, will fair against the San Francisco front, led by Bosa, on the road.
On the road in their debut together, for a line that has never played together, makes it even tougher to communicate.
The debate rages on around the NFL about whether starters need preseason work or not.
The coach who won the last two Super Bowls, Kansas City’s Andy Reid, feels they do. Other teams feel they don’t. They Jets aren’t alone.
The proof will be in the pudding once the season starts.
The 49ers other end is Leonard Floyd. Jets fans remember him.
On the interior of their defensive line, the 49ers have one of the game’s better defensive tackles, Javon Hargrave.
I can’t even imagine the challenge for Jets guard Alijah Vera-Tucker, who has not played a tackle football game since Week Five last October, when he suffered a season-ending injury, going out against Hargrave in his first game back. Vera-Tucker might do great. We shall see. But it’s certainly an enormous challenge to play your first tackle football game in a year against Hargrave.
Robert Saleh said last week that keeping starters out of preseason games wasn’t related to injury risk.
“I’m honestly not thinking about it from an injury standpoint,” Saleh said.
So the people who thought the Jets were keeping the players out to prevent injuries, were perhaps mistaken.
But whatever the reason, we will certainly learn a lot of the science of both approaches in Week 1 in Santa Clara because the 49ers played a lot of starters in the preseason.
However, it’s going to be flat-out fascinating to see how the Jets’ offensive line fairs against Bosa, Floyd, Hargrave and company with no game reps in the preseason.
August 27, 2024
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