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Trevor Lawrence looked
really comfortable reading the Jets’ defense tonight and there is a good reason for that.
Jacksonville is coming off a win over Dallas, and the Cowboys, under defensive coordinator Dan Quinn, basically play the same defensive system as the Jets. Quinn and Robert Saleh both come from the Pete Carroll coaching tree.
Lawrence picked apart the Jets zone tonight, really trusting his eyes . . .
The poor performance you saw from Zach Wilson tonight really wasn’t his fault.
I have said it before, I will say it again, to hit the reset button, to fix a quarterback’s mechanics and footwork, and which requires a lot of heavy lifting, and then put him out there again three weeks later, is a plan doomed to fail.
It’s absolutely impossible to fix that stuff in three weeks. IMPOSSIBLE.
So in a way, putting Wilson back out there after just three weeks of mechanical retraining, was unfair to the player.
Well, you might say, “Well, Mike White got hurt.”
True, but you have Joe Flacco, who you paid $3.5 million guaranteed to play this year. If you bring in a veteran QB, with a ton of experience, including playoff and Super Bowl experience, and you need to beat Detroit and/or Jacksonville in must-win playoff games, and you can trust him to play a game or two, what the heck is he doing on the team?
But if Flacco can’t play, you could always go with Chris Streveler and run the read option, which they did in the second half.
But to put Wilson back out there, after three weeks, when you said he needed to fix his mechanics, including stop throwing off his back foot so much, is a dereliction of duty.
And was unfair to the other 52 guys on the roster and Wilson . . .
The Jets clearly need to make some offensive line changes and one of them probably needs to be Laurent Duvernay-Tardif taking over for Nate Herbig.
Herbig is a gritty player, but he has physical limitations and is best served in a backup swing role, and perhaps a hold-the-fort starter for a couple of games, not a long-haul starter which he’s been this year . . .
The Jets’ best pass rusher, Bryce Huff, hardly played tonight.
I might have missed a play, but I didn’t see him out there the entire first half.
I’m not sure if Jets D-Line coach Aaron Whitecotton is being given an edict from above him to play the two rookies – Jermaine Johnson and Michael Clemons – ahead of Huff due to them being draft picks, but it obviously makes little sense for your best edge-rusher to hardly play tonight.
Stop the draft picks politics.
And by the way, they keep playing Johnson and Clemons together which makes no sense. Put a veteran on one side and a rookie on the other, not two rookies.
Last week, in their loss to Detroit, on the 51-yard TD by tight end Brock Wright, the end combination was Johnson and Clemons. I’m not blaming either one of them for the catch, but why would you have two rookies as your ends late in the game, on such a key play? . . .
Quinnen Williams bolted after the game without speaking to the media.
Usually I don’t make a big deal about who talks or doesn’t, but this guy is on the brink of a monster contract, and is perhaps the best player on the team, so perhaps say a few words to the press, not just for the sake of the media, but to show strong leadership to your teammates and the fans.
Not an ideal look for the talented defensive tackle . . .
Steveler took quite a beating tonight playing his heart out, taking a lot of big hits, and was limping badly in the locker room after the game.
December 23, 2022
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