Three Takeaways We Learned From The Jets Preseason
If I were miraculously blessed to be a writer on “The Simpsons”, one of my episode-opening gags would include a few frames with the irascible Bart Simpson at the detention blackboard, forced to scribble the following 100 times in chalk:
I will not take anything away from preseason NFL football.
I will not take anything away from preseason NFL football.
I will not take anything away from preseason NFL football.
I will not take…
There are legions of examples where successful or subpar outings in these made-for-TV contests did not translate to equivalent performances when the games started to count. For all the fun fourth-string quarterback Chris Streveler delivered to Jets fans over the last three weeks, including a third consecutive fourth quarter comeback to defeat the Giants in the annual rivalry affair, 31-27, at MetLife Stadium on Sunday, his theatrics won’t even make it to the footnotes of the story of Gang Green’s 2022 season. Just as very few remember that Browning Nagle once led New York to a 5-0 preseason before imploding during the 1992 regular season.
However, if you put a gun to my head and forced me to reveal three things I learned about the Jets in the last month:
1) The Jets have vastly improved their depth
How can I prove this? Pay attention to how many players the Jets will cut by Tuesday to get down to a 53-man roster who end up making other NFL clubs. On the opposite side of the coin, there may be only a couple of positions where Jets General Manager Joe Douglas dips into the waiver wire pool to secure improvements. In years past, the reverse was true—the Jets would constantly bring in new blood because the talent was threadbare while those that were cut generally weren’t worthy of finding employment anywhere else in the league.
Douglas and Head Coach Robert Saleh, if they were honest, would likely cast much of the remainder of the team’s 2020 Draft class overboard, namely third-rounders Jabari Zuniga (edge rusher) and Ashtyn Davis (safety), and fourth-rounder La’Mical Perine (running back), all of whom have shown they have the potential to earn NFL snaps. I haven’t even included second-round wide receiver Denzel Mims, who was showcased to the tune of 7 receptions for 102 yards and a touchdown on Sunday, because all indications point to him staying put unless Douglas can find a trade partner to honor Mims’ request. If cut, however, he’d surely be scooped up by a WR-needy team. Others on the bubble who also deserve opportunities elsewhere, in my opinion, include running back Ty Johnson, tight end Lawrence Cager, and special teams ace Justin Hardee.
Saleh acknowledged after Sunday’s win the difficulties he is facing with the numbers. He probably has as many as 15 capable defensive linemen—how many can he keep? Ten is a lot, but it wouldn’t be shocking if Saleh went with 11. Similar dilemmas can be found at a host of other positions.
Quite a change, right?
2) Mobile quarterbacks will prove humbling to Saleh
I mentioned a talent influx above, and speed is a key element of talent, but I have doubts that New York has enough to keep up with the following lineup of swift opposing QBs out of the box: Lamar Jackson (Baltimore, Week 1), Mitchell Trubisky (Pittsburgh, Week 4), Aaron Rodgers (Green Bay, Week 6), Russell Wilson (Denver, Week 7), and Josh Allen (Buffalo (Week 9). Lucky for Saleh, he will miss Cleveland’s suspended Deshaun Watson and get the less-dangerous but still mobile Jacoby Brissett in their Week 2 tilt, but the others are all among the league’s best at breaking containment to wreak havoc against any defense.
Per ProFootballReference.com, the Jets were dinged with the sixth-most missed tackles in the league last season. The hope is that the revamped secondary could help rectify that issue, but the fact remains that outside of the three preseason games, where the starters played minimal snaps, the Jets have barely worked on bringing ballcarriers to the ground. We won’t really know until Jackson takes off with the ball on September 11 whether Gang Green has it in them to contain these multi-purpose threats.
My gut tells me that Saleh, a defensive-oriented coach who doesn’t have any hair to pull out, will be reaching for any stubs on the top of his head at the sight of all these elusive QBs busting through the Jets D.
3) QB play will drive the season
This is an obvious take that pertains to all 32 NFL clubs, but it should be reinforced to Jets fans that for all the improvements to the roster, the one that matters exponentially more than any other is how much more production New York can get from their returning quarterbacks.
The Jets desperately need Zach Wilson, who will likely miss opening day following arthroscopic knee surgery, to take a significant leap over his horrendous rookie season. It wasn’t just the percentage of turnover-worthy plays, a stat where Wilson sat atop the league for the first 13 weeks of last season, per ProFootballFocus.com, before turning into a game manager in the season’s final quarter. Even during that stretch, though, he was the league’s least efficient QB in terms of expected points added per play and completion percentage over expected, according to rbsdm.com.
Joe Flacco, the presumed Week 1 starter against his former club where he once won a Super Bowl, needed Sunday to shake off some rust. Again, you can take those three possessions, including the god-awful pick-six, and flush them down the toilet, but the point is that no matter how many running backs (Breece Hall) Douglas trades up to draft or Pro Bowl guards (Laken Tomlinson) he signs, if his QB doesn’t process what he sees and isn’t accurate, it’s not going to matter much.
Fortunately, the Bart Simpson rule above also allows me to ignore the results from Wilson’s sole preseason outing, where in two series he gift-wrapped an interception to an Eagle and then ignorantly hurt himself in a meaningless attempt to gain more yards on a scramble instead of sliding or heading out of bounds. If Streveler’s near-perfect preseason can be erased from all relevant files, Wilson’s foibles deserve the same treatment.