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They added some players to help avoid this kind of thing . . .
When the Jets played Atlanta in Week Five last season, they were down 20-17 in the middle of the fourth quarter. They made it 20-17 with a long TD drive and a two-point conversion.
They had some momentum and it looked like they had a chance to win this game, if they could get a stop on defense. After a rough first half for their offense, they got into a groove in the second half.
But on Atlanta’s first play of the next series, after the kickoff, Falcons rookie tight end Kyle Pitts got behind the Jets’ secondary for a gain of 39. Momentum killer! This play helped spearhead a TD drive.
The Falcons were very thin at receiver in this game, playing without their top two targets Calvin Ridley and Russell Gage. Pitts, their 2021 first-round pick out of Florida with incredible speed for a tight end, was by far their top weapon in this game, the kind of guy you needed to always have two sets of eyes on. How does he get behind your defense? CBS game analyst Adam Archuletta, a former NFL safety, wondered the same thing.
“This just can’t happen – he went right down the middle – they just let him go,” Archuletta said after the play.
Look, I’m not going to get into finger-pointing at this point. That game is a distant memory. Let’s put it this way, there were some young defensive backs who looked like they might be suspects.
Look, we all know the Jets’ defense is front-driven, meaning it’s about the defensive line creating contract havoc and not allowing opposing quarterbacks a ton of time in the pocket to pick apart the coverage.
And we know the Jets need to put more pressure on opposing quarterbacks this year, and with the selection of defensive end Jermaine Johnson in the 2022 first round, and the return of 2021 high-priced free agent end Carl Lawson from the injured list, on paper, they should be able to do that.
However, no matter how front-driven a defense is, you need your coverage guys to do their part, and you can’t allow a player like Pitts to easily get behind your coverage down the deep middle.
So the Jets need their pass coverage guys, whether it’s corners, safeties, or linebackers, to consistently read their keys a lot better than what we often saw last year.
And that is why the Jets’ brass did a lot of work this off-season to bolster their pass coverage.
We talked about this yesterday; that they could have four new starters in the secondary from what we saw at the end of last year with cornerbacks Sauce Gardner and D.J. Reed, and safeties Jordan Whitehead and Lamarcus Joyner. Cornerback Bryce Hall who started most of last year should still have a big role, but it’s possible that the four base defense secondary starters are new from the end of last season.
And what you have in the quartet of Gardner, Reed, Whitehead and Joyner are four guys who are all considered very instinctive players.
The bottom line is that Pitts play, can’t happen this season.
Look, you are going to get beat, a lot, in a pass-happy league like the NFL, but some things can never happen, like the other teams’ main target, getting behind the entire secondary for a big gain.
And with the highly-instinctive reinforcements, the Jets added on the back end, the chances of this kind of play happening have probably been minimized.
June 29, 2022
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