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The Jets final cuts to 53 were basically chalk . . .
In other words, all the favorites won. Chalk is when gamblers bet on favorites.
Did you see any surprising decisions?
You know how much I hate confirmation bias. And fans of a team should hate it also. You should always keep the best 53, with draft position and contract dollars not impacting your decisions.
Clearly there was some confirmation bias on the Jets cut down to 53.
But you now what, I’m not going to rip Joe Douglas right now for some of the confirmation bias that was clearly at work.
Why? Because this was one of strangest off-seasons and summers in modern NFL history. At least in 2011, during the lockout, while there was no off-season, they had preseason games.
It’s very hard to make personnel decisions without spring on-field camps and preseason games.
So I’m not going to be too critical of Douglas for going chalk and keeping all nine of his draft picks. If this happens in future years, all bets are off.
You know that old carpenters saying, “Measure twice, cut once.”
Well this summer, when it came to personnel decisions, it was “Measure once, cut once.”
Fourth-round pick, QB James Morgan, is on the active roster, and Mike White and David Fales are on the practice squad. Did Morgan beat out White and Fales? No way to know. It looked like White was better than Morgan this summer, but quarterback is the perfect example of a position that you absolutely, positively need preseason games to evaluate players. In training camp and spring practices, you can’t touch the quarterbacks. You can’t really evaluate quarterbacks unless the real bullets are flying, so to speak. You really can’t. How will they deal with the pass rush? What is their pocket presence like? How are they are diagnosing opposing defenses and making the right reads? How are they at line calls?
Another political move was keeping Josh Andrews as the interior swing-man over Jon Harrison. I wrote about this before. Once Rex Hogan pushed for his signing of Andrews, Harrison essential had no chance, barring injuries. Hogan worked in Indianapolis with Andrews. Just like Hogan had corners Quincy Wilson, Pierre Desir and Nate Hairston in Indy. Hogan has a lot of influence with Joe Douglas. Harrison didn’t have a chance in this battle, especially with no preseason games. Not sure why all these people are saying they were “shocked” by the Harrison release.
I see zero surprises with this roster.
It was a little surprising they kept so many defensive linemen. I would have moved on from one or two heavy-legged guys who lack twitch and have issues shedding blocks.
Frankie Luvu needs to start. Don’t go with the same plan as last year which led to very little edge-rush, and issues with sealing the edge against runners going outside.
But I digress.
Once again, I’m not going to be critical of Douglas for confirmation bias this year due to the usual circumstances.
But moving forward, if Douglas wants to build a winner, he needs to stay away from it.
And surely he knows it.
September 7, 2020
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