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On December 8, 2020,
the Buffalo Bills beat the San Francisco 49ers 34-24. In this game, Josh Allen threw for a career-high four touchdowns and 375 yards. That was against Robert Saleh’s 49ers defense.
Fast forward to November 14, 2021, the Bills faced Saleh’s Jets defense for the first time, and Buffalo beat Saleh’s team 45-17, behind Allen’s 366 and two touchdown passes.
The point is that Allen and the offensive coordinator Brian Daboll clearly have a strong feel for how to play against Saleh’s defense. If you saw that Bills win over the 49ers last year, played in Arizona due to COVID restrictions in Santa Clara, you saw Allen throwing to wide-open receivers with regularity. It was a harbinger of what we saw on Sunday.
Allen and Daboll clearly love facing this scheme. Some in the NFL feel the Jets’ current scheme is a tad predictable.
On Sunday, the Kansas City Chiefs blew out the Las Vegas Raiders 41-14, and Patrick Mahomes threw for 406 yards and five touchdowns. Why am I bringing this up? Well, Gus Bradley, the defensive coordinator of the Raiders, plays a similar system to the Jets. Bradley and Saleh come from the Pete Carroll coaching tree. “Simple system” sounds good on paper, but sometimes it can be problematic with so many highly intelligent offensive play-callers around the league.
Things need to change with the Jets defense in a big way. What we saw against the New England Patriots, Indianapolis Colts and Buffalo Bills constitute a major crisis for the Jets’ organization. The scheme needs to be tweaked, and perhaps needs more wrinkles.
They also need better talent at certain positions, and also, they need better depth.
The Bills’ defense, that dominated the Jets on Sunday, was without two key front seven players – nose tackle Star Lotulelei (COVID) and linebacker Tremaine Edmunds (hamstring). It didn’t make a lick of difference. There was no dropoff whatsoever. Backup defensive linemen Efe Obada and Vernon Butler helped fill the  Lotulelei void, and A.J. Klein did a terrific job for Edmunds.
The Bills have great depth, especially on defense. The Jets don’t. Some of that has to do with injuries, but also some questionable roster choices. So next off-season, the Jets need to not only load up on better starting defensive talent at some positions, but also make sure they have great depth, like Buffalo. Some, who don’t follow this stuff closely, might not have realized that this #1 ranked Buffalo defense was playing without two key starters in the front seven based on their sheer domination, but they were.
But depth (and culture) helped them overcome these players missing . . .
Saleh on his team’s defensive performance on Sunday:
“For the most part in that first half, we’re playing some good ball. It was 10-3 with about a 1:55 to go, had some big time stops and some bad situations. We get beat on a double move to start the 2:00 drive which sets up a touchdown and so they go in the locker room, it’s 17-3, we get lapped, it’s 24-3 and then the very next play we have the turnover. They score, which makes it 31-3 and now the game’s over. It kind of got, it was a four series sequence there where it kind of got out of hand. Really liked the way we were playing for the most part and then that third quarter, those first two drives of the third quarter were not anything near what we had been doing in the first half.”
It doesn’t matter that there were spurts of decent play from the defense. The bottom line is they lost 45-17 and gave up close to 500 yards offense to Buffalo. The final result is all the matters.
November 15, 2021
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