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In Part II of this three part game breakdown, Dan continues to look at the offense, and has some analysis of the blocking issues and the Jets second weapon . . .
Greg McElroy and the Jets second weapon, Jeff Cumberland, already have a good feel for each other.
For the second game in a row, they made a lot happen.
On the first play of the Jets second possession, McElroy hits Cumberland on skinny post down the deep left side for 26 yards. A few plays later, Cumberland took advantage of a mismatch with LB Dan Skuta covering him, and beat him down the right seam for 17 yards. Linebackers can’t cover Cumberland, who runs 4.4. This drive ended with a Nick Folk field goal.
On the next drive, McElroy didn’t get help – with targets (Jeremy Kerley and Cumberland) not holding on to catchable balls.
Two plays after a Brashton Satele pick gave the Jets the ball on the Cincinnati four-yard line, McElroy ran a bootleg right, and hit Joe McKnight for a touchdown.
Drew Willy came in the fourth quarter, but was only allowed to throw one pass (incomplete). With the Jets up 27-7, Rex went very conservative. He clearly didn’t want to run up the score on his good friend Marvin Lewis. Remember, Rex’s old team Baltimore was accused of running up the score on Kansas City last week, and Rex didn’t want to go down that road.
The highlight of Willy’s stint was a 69-yard run by tailback Chris Jennings. After this run, the Jets had Willy kneel on the last three plays.
Jennings, a former Cleveland Brown and Hartford Colonial, is better than most people think.
He moves well for a 223-pound back, and has what it take to play in the league, but where is the roster spot going to come from? I ask Jennings after the game if he was practice squad eligible, and he didn’t think so. I’m going to check this . . .
Speaking of roster spots, Logan Payne is making himself very hard to cut. It’s not his work at wide receiver (he had a drop last week), but he’s not just good, he’s a very good kick cover guy. Most receivers don’t cut it as special team’s cover guys, but this guy has a knack. He had two impressive stops in this game. In the fourth quarter, he had a terrific tackle for a loss of one on a punt return by Jemere Holland. Westhoff is going to fight long and hard for this guy . . .
Not only was the run blocking poor by the Jets starting line, but some of the non-line blocking was underwhelming.
LaDainian Tomlinson missed a block on a blitzing linebacker Thomas Howard on a play that resulted in sack, not by Howard, but by Manny Lawson. But the missed block contributed to the chaos in the backfield that led to the sack.
Cumberland was called for an illegal block in the back that reversed a nine-yard screen to Joe McKnight.
Bilal Powell missed a block on the blitzing linebacker DeQuin Evans and this led to an incompletion . . .
Speaking of Powell, he had a gain of 11 off right tackle in the fourth behind, among others, converted defensive tackle Matt Kroul . . .
One other thing on the Jets poor running in the first half – while everyone is quick to make fun of the Bengals, and demean everything about them, they have a lot of talent in their Front Seven, and aren’t easy to run on. Brick Ferguson had issues with DE Mike Johnson. They have one of the NFL’s top defensive coordinators in Mike Zimmer.
The Bengals problems are on offense, not on defense.
The Jets do need to run better, but they were facing a formidable opponent when the Bengals first-team defense was on the field for most of the first half. And the Jets were playing without perhaps their best run blocker – right guard Brandon Moore – and his replacement, Vlad Ducasse, is struggling. He had two more false starts.
