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A heaping helping of Jets Whispers . . .
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers often took safety Jordan Whitehead off the field on third down and that ticked him off.
āIām a team player, but I was frustrated,ā Whitehead said after signing with the Jets last off-season.Ā āI would come out on third down, sometimes. I just felt like I was making enough plays, and I was being a leader on the team. It just felt like I should have been in the game…Iām a team player, and itās a team-first mentality, but I definitely was frustrated. I think anybody would be.ā
But there was a reason Bruce Arians and Todd Bowles utilized the player the way they did. They thought he had some short-coming in coverage. He’s excellent in run support and a big-time hitter on receivers after the catch, but sometimes his coverage instincts are a little off.
And that seemed to be the case on the 51-yard touchdown catch by Detroit Lions tight end Brock Wright . . .
As you know by now, Zach Wilson will start this week with Mike White (ribs) still not cleared.
The Jets made a couple of players (C.J. Mosley and Duane Brown) available today to the media, aside from Wilson, and they were peppered with questions about the QB, and one answer from Mosley surprised some.
He said he saw a quarterback who was more confident than prior to his benching. The answer was considered a little eclectic. Who is more confident after getting benched? But Mosley really didn’t know what to say, and why were reporters hammering a defensive player with questions about the quarterback? It was a little out of hand. Both Mosley and Brown seemed a little uncomfortable with the myriad question about a teammate, who is coming off a game where he was 18-35 passing in his return last week. They did the best they could . . .
Do the best players always play?
“I do think that what we represent here, and I think Joe (Douglas) is on the same page, once you get drafted, it doesnāt matter,” Robert Saleh said. “It was something I learned from Pete (Carroll). I donāt care how much you get paid, I donāt care where you got drafted, if youāre better by that much, youāre going to play. That will never change.”
Then why was Bryce Huff inactive for the first three games, and 2022 draft picks were active ahead of him – Jermaine Johnson and Michael Clemson? Huff might be the Jets’ best edge rusher.
Then why was Mike White buried behind Joe Flacco and Zach Wilson until late November when he started against Chicago? White is clearly better than both of them right now.
The premise makes sense on paper, and it’s the best approach to running a team, but you need to make it a reality at all times.
And once the Jets do this all the time, their program will go to an even high level . . .
People critical of Carl Lawson for supposedly not having enough of an impact, don’t really get the player.
He has six sacks in 14 games this year. His last year with the Cincinnati Bengals, two years ago, he had 5.5 sacks, and the Jets gave him big money after that season.Ā He missed last year with an Achilles injury.
Lawson has never been a gaudy sack guy, and if you expected him to be because the Jets gave him big money, that is somewhat misguided. Big money doesn’t change the player’s skillset.
Lawson is a very good, not great player, and has never been a double-digit sack guy at Auburn or the NFL. He’s better at QB pressures than QB sacks. That has always been his history.
Will give you a perfect example:
In the second quarter, on a third-and-12 on the New York Jets 13, Jared Goff threw an incompletion over the short middle to receiver Amon Ra-St. Brown. The QB was rushed into the bad throw. That was because of the great job Lawson did on that play. He shed a chip block by tight end James Mitchell, and then got by left tackle Taylor Decker, and hit the QB as he was throwing.
That in a nutshell is Carl Lawson. He doesn’t have the elite bend or flexibility to be a double-digit sack guy, but he has tremendous strength and a great motor, and creates havoc that way.
The Jets know what they signed up for. They know they didn’t sign Von Miller. The people criticizing him now, just don’t understand the player . . .
December 20, 2022
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