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Players like to say about challenging matchups in practice, “Iron sharpens iron.”
And that has been said a lot about the Carl Lawson-Mekhi Becton matchup in training camp.
But it’s reaching a point now that it’s getting a little beyond iron sharpening iron.
Lawson is beating Becton too much. When you have a player you consider a special left tackle, this kind of matchup should be more balanced – with each getting an equal share of wins.
Lawson continued to get the better of Becton today, consistently getting under his pads to disrupt plays in the backfield.
Lawson is a tough matchup for Becton because he’s built so low to the ground with a powerful lower base, so from a leverage standpoint, that creates issues for the 6-7 Becton. As they say in wrestling, “Low man wins.”
Part of this also could be related to weight. If Becton dropped some weight, he would be even lighter on his feet and that would help him in “pass pro” as they say in the football world . . .
CB Jason Pinnock has a lot of potential, but sometimes he can be a grabby with receivers in practice, so he needs to cut down on this to avoid penalties . . .
I never like to judge players about injuries. If you’re hurt, you’re hurt. But you have to wonder if DE Jabari Zuniga will be able to consistently stay healthy.
He missed the first two months of last year, his rookie campaign, with a quad injury suffered in training camp, and now in his second training camp, he’s sidelined with an ankle injury. His last year at Florida, he suffered a high-ankle sprain. It’s unclear if his current injury is connected to that.
Once again, not judging Zuniga. I don’t like to do that with injuries, but these maladies are starting to add up, and you have to wonder if this keeps up, if Joe Douglas, at some point, will have to make a tough decision about this 2020 third-round pick.
It’s interesting how rookie classes turn out. 2020 undrafted free agent DE Bryce Huff is clearly ahead of Zuniga in the pecking order. That is why you can’t have any “confirmation bias” with personnel decisions. You just throw a blanket over everyone on the field, and play the best players, regardless of how they were acquired.
While it’s unfair to make a big deal about Zach Wilson’s inconsistency in practice now because this time a year is about learning and growing.
But watching him, one thing he might need to work on is throwing deep passes a little earlier.
In college last year, playing the likes of UTSA, Troy, Texas State and North Alabama, he would see guys flash wide open down field, and could launch a howitzer, even somewhat late, and hit them.
But in the NFL, he needs to throw deep passes a little earlier because the windows are smaller.
A perfect example of a perfect deep pass today was a fly route from Mike White to Denzel Mims. It was thrown early and was an absolute dime.
Just saying Wilson needs to sometimes throw with a little more anticipation down field. He was picked off today by safety LaMarcus Joyner on a pass thrown late over the deep middle to WR Corey Davis . . .
Jets center Connor McGovern had two pancake blocks today – one in a line drill on Nathan Shepherd, and then another pulling left on a screen, where he took out linebacker Jarrad Davis on the second level.
McGovern is a very good fit for the Jets new zone blocking scheme.
August 10, 2021
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