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Being a positive person is a good thing.
Having a glass is half-full instead of a half-empty mindset is a good thing.
It’s good for your soul.
However, in the football world, this kind of thinking will only get you so far.
You can have the most positive attitude in the world, but unless you have the requisite talent and are great at chess on grass, the power of positive thinking will only help so much.
The Jets need to improve on defense on in so many ways, like forcing more turnovers and getting key defensive stops in games to help the offense.
Robert Saleh was asked about defensive improvement in Phoenix last week.
“We’ll be a lot better,” Saleh said.
Hard to know that right now. You can’t will things to happen with your words and positivity.
You gotta just roll your sleeves up (which he will do) and fix it.
The Jets’ defense wasn’t very good after their Week 10 bye last year, and not causing enough turnovers was part of the problem.
“Despite the defense rising from last in the NFL to fourth last season, and despite Saleh, defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich and the players’ best efforts, takeaways were a constant sore spot after the Week 10 bye,” wrote Randy Lange for the team’s website. “In the nine games before the bye, they had 14 takeaways and a plus-1 turnover margin. In the eight games after, the TO tap ran dry as they had just two TAs and a minus-8 margin.”
“Looking back at the second half of the year, we’ve got to get the ball, we weren’t able to get the ball in takeaways,” Saleh said. “And I know we attack it, I know we’re trying to disrupt it the best we can. But we have to set up the short field, score on defense, find a way to jar the ball loose.”
So how do they fix this?
Well obviously fix the run defense, because when you get gashed as much as the Jets did up front during their six-game losing streak, it’s hard to get a lot of turnovers because that kind of porous run defense sets up easy passes off play-fakes or favorable down-and-distance situations.
Third and long is a wonderful scenario to force turnovers, but if you can’t stop the run, that isn’t going to happen very often.
“I think we saw the third-most runs in the league a year ago,” Saleh said. “It’s hard to get the ball out on running plays.”
The reason they had so many rushing attempts was they struggled to stop the run, so teams just kept running it. They are talking to massive veteran nose tackle Al Woods (6-3. 330) right now. He could help because they need to get a little bigger and stouter up the middle.
Also, they must improve their instincts at some positions on defense.
The starting corners, D.J. Reed and Sauce Gardner, are solid in this area, but when you have a speedy starting linebacker, who starts 15 games, and has one PD and no picks, some would consider that problematic.
When you have a starting free safety who has inconsistent coverage instincts, leading to his former team moving on, and those issues lead to some blown assignments with his new team, that is problematic.
Obviously, a great way to cause turnovers are highly-instinctive cover guys jumping routes.
If they get more instinctive in coverage, and more stout up the middle, this should help their defensive cause a great deal.
April 4, 2023
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