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I was in a sports bar watching the Lions-Giants preseason game, and there was a Jets show on one of the other televisions.
On the show, they were having a roundtable discussion: “Initial impressions of Jets training camp.”
There were two former Jets on the panel, who were very good players, and are terrific analysts, but neither has been at camp.
Or if they were, I missed them, and it was perhaps a cameo.
How can you give “initial impressions of training camp” if you aren’t there or barely there (I never saw them)?
And I don’t blame either one of these guys. They have other gigs; I am sure this segment wasn’t their idea.
But how can you make an initial impression of something you didn’t see?
There are plenty of other segments you could do with these two former players, who know the sport inside and out, without asking them for “initial impressions” of something they haven’t been able to cover do to other obligations . . .
At Thursday’s joint practice, there was so much attention given to the Jets’ offensive field, that the competition on the second field, with the Washington offense against the Jets’ defense didn’t get as much attention.
Yesterday, I mentioned a couple of impressive QB pressures by Will McDonald and Javon Kinlaw, but today, I’m going to bring up a play that wasn’t as positive.
One of rookie QB Jayden Daniel’s better plays in practice was on a crossing route to tight end John Bates that went for a long gain.
While this was a good play for Daniels, it was a bad play for the Jets, because the tight end was left wide open. Nobody was near him.
I’m not going to pretend to know who blew the coverage because I don’t have access to the playbook.
The closest person I saw to him was a linebacker, but it would be presumptuous of me to blame that person.
But obviously, this can’t happen, and before people put this defense in Canton, they need to clean stuff like this up . . .
I’m not into rankings. The only ranking that matters in the NFL is which team is #1 at the end of the year after hoisting the Lombardi Trophy after the Super Bowl.
But I just want to point something out about the NFL’s top 100 player ranking that had Aaron Rodgers listed as the 92nd-best player in the NFL.
That is patently absurd.
I’m not going to tell you where he should be ranked because of how unimportant these things are, but the highest-rated QB on the list was Lamar Jackson at #2, and in my opinion, Rodgers is better than him. WR Tyreek Hill was ranked as the top player in the league.
People act like this list has more legitimacy because players vote on it. That is hogwash.
Players don’t know a lot about the film of other players unless they match up with them. For instance, if you ask a cornerback about receivers he faced, he’s very qualified to talk about it, but offensive tackles, not so much.
And I will never forget, earlier in my career, when they used to pass out Pro Bowl ballots in the Jets’ locker room, and players would be checking boxes, and you would hear them say things like – “Hey, who’s a good linebacker I should vote for.”
They didn’t know nearly as much as I thought they did. They focus on their assignments. If you ask a guard to rate a top defensive tackle he might be able to do it, but that is only if he faced him.
So player voting isn’t much better than media voting. It really isn’t. I’m telling you. There is a lot of wild guessing that goes on, unless it’s in their wheelhouse related to guys they matched up with.
The QB we’ve seen this summer in camp, who is a future Hall-of-Famer, is way better than 92. He can still make all the throws and is elite at the line.
Maybe coming off an Achilles tear, you push him down a little, but not to 92. That is insulting to our intelligence.
August 9, 2024
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