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Some notes . . .
Mike Pennel was the Jets’ starting nose tackle today with Steve McLendon out.
Pennel is a powerhouse, and, at times, will make a “wow” play.
In a red zone, on the 10-yard-line, he blew up a running play by pushing center Spencer Long back into the runner, who had to bounce outside and was stopped for a loss. Pennel didn’t make the tackle, but he was the key to the play.
Long is big, powerful man who is hard to move, so to push him back like this is hard.
The Jets need more of this from Pennel.
He does this kind of thing once in a while, but they need more of this from him. He disappears too much.
But this was a big-time play against a very good center.
And you saw how good this center is, at another point of practice, Long manhandled rookie Foley Fatukasi on a Bilal Powell run up the middle . . .
Second-day in a row Michigan CB Jeremy Clark was at safety, so now it looks like an official move more than an experiment. Clark had a great play in run support, late in practice, in the red zone, stopping RB George Atkinson for a loss off left tackle . . .
Josh McCown makes very good quick decisions, which is a good thing in the NFL. As they say, “If you wait, you are late.”
He is great at audibles – getting the Jets out of bad calls into good ones.
At 38, mentally, he’s in such a great place, at one of the most mentally challenging position in the entire sports world – NFL QB . . .
You have to take some completions in training camp with a grain of salt. In a red-zone drill, on back-to-back plays, Sam Darnold threw touchdowns to fullback Dimitri Flowers and tight end Clive Walford.
Both were nice throws and catches. On both plays you saw Darnold’s top-shelf accuracy on display.
But in real football terms, both plays might have ended up with sacks. On the first play, safety Terrence Brooks blitzed, but had to pull up before he hit Darnold, and on the second, Lorenzo Mauldin got in his face, but pulled up. You can’t touch the quarterback in practice. So in a real football, would either one of these plays have happened? It’s hard to tell.
August 2, 2018
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