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Got somebody to bite . . .
The Jets were taking the high road on Sean Payton’s comments about Nathaniel Hackett, but an ESPN reporter went fishing and got somebody to give him what he was looking for.
“[Nathaniel Hackett] got thrown under the bus — and then they tried to drag him under the bus,” McGovern told ESPN. “We wanted to rally around him from the start. He’s such a good guy. I don’t know how you want to say this — the opportunity he has — but we want to make the most of him being our playcaller.”
Bingo.
Can the Jets make Denver pay? Perhaps, but they are going to be dealing with deafening noise, and a QB who is coming off a decent game, but hasn’t shown it’s a trend yet.
The Jets should be able to score points on offense, but will their defense be able to keep the score down. Payton is a great play-caller, Russell Wilson isn’t playing bad, and the Broncos have a lot of talent at receiver.
And the Jets could be down two corners in Brandon Echols and D.J. Reed, who are both injured.
Look, I’m not being critical of McGovern for having his coaches back, but if you are going to take the high road on a topic, it might be best for it to be organizational.
Not that New England is a good place to point to right now, but you know that over the years, when it come to messaging in Foxboro, it has always been organizational . . .
A big story today was that Breece Hall isn’t going to be on a pitch count anymore. But was he ever. Before the Jets opener against Buffalo, Robert Saleh said, “I don’t know if I want to call it a snap count, but we’re going to be smart with them. We’ll continue to evaluate and build up what we think Monday needs to be, but it’s not that we’re putting a snap count on it.” . . .
Watching the Jets run defense the last three weeks, there clearly need to be some lineup changes.
And I’m not talking about benchings necessarily, just tweaked snap counts.
Some guys are clearly struggling against the run.
It somebody is consistently struggling setting the edge perhaps you make him inactive one week, or cut down on his snaps.
After three bad rushing defense games in a row, this is a trend now, not an aberration.
It’s interesting that the one-game 340-pound nose tackle Al Woods was inactive, they gave up a season-high 204 yards rushing.
Something needs to change . . .
The longest punt in pro football history was by New York Jets punter Steve O’Neal who had a 98-yard punt at Denver in 1969.
The ball travels further in the mountain air, but still what an amazing accomplishment,
Talking to Jets punter Thomas Morstead today, and I brought up the O’Neal record, and what it’s like punting in the rarified air.
And he got into the fact that the Jets didn’t sign him to hit those really long punts, but to punt more situationally, like high hang-time punts, and great punts inside the 20 making teams have long fields to travel.
The Jets had issues the last couple of years with poor situational punts leading to some long returns.