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Here is Part III of Dan Leberfeld’s extensive breakdown of Jets QB Mark Sanchez, and his performance at the New York Football Giants.
The Jets second possession of the second half started off well with a run-based approach. On the first three carries of the possession, Shonn Greene ran for five, eight and four yards.
Then the Jets went to the air, on second-and-four, and Sanchez was sacked on his first passing attempt of this possession. But you know what, it’s hard to blame the line on this one. Justin Tuck was out in space as he rolled right, and the lineman all had players they had to account for. Sanchez needs to throw this away. In other words, Tuck was uncovered on this play; he just happened to be out there as Sanchez rolled right. Maybe the Jets are running too many bootlegs (to cut the field in half for Sanchez), and they are becoming predictable.
Then on third-and-12, Sanchez threw a mid-range out to Holmes, on the right side, that was off-target. It sailed over his head. He was open.
The Jets next possession started off with two good runs – Greene for seven and  LaDainian Tomlinson for six. A few plays later, Sanchez attempted a pass to Dustin Keller on the short right side, and it was tipped at the line by DT Rocky Bernard. The possession ended with Sanchez dumping to LT, and the gain was way short of the first down. They had a third-and-18 due to a holding call.
Once again, the Jets started off the next drive, late in the third, with a quality run – a 13-yard gain by Greene off left tackle.
But then they went to the air and it didn’t work out well. There was a six-yard completion to Keller, in-between a pair of incompletions to Holmes. The second one was a drop over the middle, on the same route he dropped in practice on Thursday. This drop was all on him – the pass was fine.
This drop was on third-and-nine, after a false start by Brandon Moore, pushed back a more manageable third-and-four.
Moore had a couple of penalties in this game. I’m not here to make excuses for the offensive line. They were too inconsistent in this game, but I do think that when you bust your butt on the line week-after-week, and the quarterback is consistently wasting your effort, it does become demoralizing.
The Jets got the ball back at the very end of the third quarter, and on first down, Greene dropped a pass in the short right flat. His hands are much better than when he got out of Iowa, but still too inconsistent.
But this pass play leads me to a big picture question – why is so much of the Jets route tree so short? Tony Boselli, who did the national broadcast on the radio, pointed out, that on so many plays, nobody was running more the seven yards.
There could be two reasons for this. First off, the Jets don’t want Sanchez getting hit too much, and shorter routes get the ball out quicker. Secondly, they don’t trust his ability to read defense, so short routes are easier to read.
We will have Part IV of our look at Sanchez by 9 pm this evening.