Link: Rick Gosselin Bullish on the Jets?
Widely revered Rick Gosselin of the Dallas Morning News writes that he think the Jets might be a nice team to keep an eye on in 2009.
The Jets needed help on defense, where they allowed a division-high 356 points last season. That’s where Ryan comes in. His defense finished in the NFL’s top six in each of his four seasons as Baltimore’s coordinator. His Ravens led the NFL in 2006 and finished second in 2008.
Ryan has already rid himself of three starters (DE Kenyon Coleman, LB Eric Barton and S Abram Elam) and two reserves (C David Barrett and LB Cody Spencer) from the New York defense of a year ago.
The Jets signed two starters off Ryan’s Baltimore defense in free agency, Pro Bowl linebacker Bart Scott and safety Jim Leonhard, and they acquired Pro Bowl cornerback Lito Sheppard in a trade with the Eagles. New York also signed free-agent defenders DE Marques Douglas (Baltimore), DT Howard Green (Seattle), CB Donald Strickland (San Francisco) and LB Larry Izzo (New England).
I had never seen the statistic that Gosselin leads off that quote with before, but when you look, the Jets ranked 18th in points allowed in 2008, 19th in 2007, and 6th in 2006. Now granted, there’s a lot more that goes into defense than just points allowed, but improve from 19th to 18th with the additions of Jenkins and Pace seems mind boggling, in retrospect.
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I hope Gosselin is correct, and the defense is markedly improved. Under the past two coaches, Edwards and Mangini, it seemed that even when the defense was “on,” we were one of those “bend but don’t break” type of teams. And in the past two seasons at least, we’d eventually break toward the end of the game.
It would be nice to see a defense that played the role of aggressor, and forced the opposing offense to break. Let’s hope!
Does that 356 points include all the ints that got taken to the house by Brett? If so it doesn’t feel fair to me
the points allowed stat can be greatly effected by turnovers (ie interceptions) which give opposing offenses short fields. Total yard allowed would be a better indicator, especially since Favre led the league in picks.
annacdotaly, how many times can you remember a Farve pick putting the jets D in a tough spot? And I am sure its no coinicidence that the defense wore down late in the year, as Favre went on his interception binge.
brett favre is also resonsible for global warming, the economic recession, and teen pregnancy (well him and Mark Chemura).
Let’s forget about last year and start focusing on how great our defense is going to be .. This Jets defense is solid .. Remember Kris Jenkins converted to nose tackle when he has always played in a 4-3 system and he did great imagine this season .. D-Revis is about to hit his prime so he’s going to be solid every week . D-Harris battled with some injuries last season so if he’s healthy he will be all over the field. Now Bart Scott is a Jet …. He’s a monster and teams will be very nervous when they have to play the Jets .. We got a great safety in K-Rhodes .. Lito Sheppard has something to prove .. Vernon Gholston has a lot to prove .. And there’s more role players .. All of those great players under the defensive mastermind Rex Ryan .. Everybody Beware of the J E T S .. I say they rank top 10 this season if the offense gets it together definitely top 5!
Well, going out on a limb, I see the Jets winning between 4 and 12 games …
No seriously, this is a team that won 9 games last year and has improved dramatically on defense. IF they can stay healthy on the o-line again and IF they can get a decent performance from whoever starts at QB and IF they don’t have a lot of turnovers, I expect an improvement from last year.
There’s a lot of “IFs” there — probably too many, so realistically, in the neighborhood of 9-7 again … the year after that when the QB situation is better settled and in Year 2 of the Rex regime — look out!
DEPTH will be the biggest issue on both sides of the ball, we have a pretty solid starting team on both sides of the ball, but if we get hit with a few injuries which is inevitable we will have issues.
I blame most of it on poor coaching as well as mediocre talent at certain spots (Kenyon Coleman, Bryan Thomas). The Jets defense really never got better under Mangini. The injury riddled unit from 2005 allowed teams to score about 6.2% above their usual average. When Mangini took over they bounced back in 2006 to hold teams 5.7% under their average but the more they tinkered with the roster the worse they have performed. In 2007 they allowed teams to score just about their average and in 2008 we fell back to the 2005 levels allowing teams to score about 5% above their scoring average.
Still Im hopeful. The 2007 Ravens gave up an extra 4.5% and ended up holding their opponents to nearly 23% below their average in 2008. They have more of a track record to fall back on than we do, but hopefully our defense gets much better.
That’s a pretty safe limb there Ray. lol
I think as important as the change in personnel is the change in philosophy between Rex and Mangini. Mangini played not to lose, whereas Rex plays to win.
Mangini and Sutton’s pass rush and blitzing were pretty vanilla, Rex will bring the heat! This should eliminate a lot of the third down conversions and subsequent drives for points.
Just a thought…..
I would expect a lot more blitzing but we will also give up alot more big plays. Under Mangini and his dropping 7-8 into coverage we got killed on the underneath crap. With Ryan we will be a lot more boom or bust.
It’s the underneath crap that keeps drives alive, and sends me into a rage!
Agreed, Rex’s defense will be more boom or bust, and I trust that it will be more bust and therefore less points. The boom or bust will also result in keeping the defense off the field.
AKA… I totally agree with you on the blitzing but im not so sure about the big plays and the boom or bust theory. If anything, the blitzing should be a key element of making big plays on D because of the way it minimizes comfortable pocket time for the opposing QB. With our new corners and a roaming Kerry, we should be picking off QBs rather than making them look like Joe Montana (ala Mangini vs. Cassell, Cutler, you name it, last year…). We were so reactionary on defense last year that we allowed the underneath stuff to develop, we gave the QBs hours in the pocket. Im liking the Rex Ryan plan… straight up BOOM
Coach Mangini did not succeed defensively because His priority was to confirm and demonstrate his values systemically and philosphically.
That’s a very different thing than trying to find what works in a particular situation to win within the context of one’s own internal vicissitudes and inclinations..
Coach Mangini hasn’t yet awakened to the aspect of harmony with the outside world.He is only coming from the inside.
That spells integrity…but integrity without harmony can never be more than sporadically successful.
I suspect that Coach Ryan is much more in tune with the in and the outs of his situation.
The result of that sagacity will be that each Jet’s player individually and integrally will succeed more more often.
Correct understanding can’t bring about a championship alone but it can when coming from the coach …imbue the team with genuine championship potential each game.
You can feel it from Coach Ryan before the first snap.
MSM,
Dont get me wrong…….I am all for sending the kitchen sink at a QB but if it gets blocked your defense is vunarable to very big plays….
Ramble.
I am with you brother. Nothing more frustrating than 3 and 7 and we rush 3 and the QB has all day to find an open guy. I assume that wont be an issue this year
Grasshopper…I mean Gregory Rasputin, I quess you’re on board with Rex? I don’t know?
In case anyone was wondering, Favre threw 4 pick 6’s last season. They were against San Diego, KC, Buffalo (1st game) and Miami. The Jets’ record in those games was 2-2 and, IMO, the only one that potentially cost the Jets a game was against Miami, which was his only pick 6 in the final 8 games. Interestingly, Chad and KC each threw 2 pick 6s (for 4 total) in 2007, all in losses (Cincy, Giants, Dallas, Pats). In 2006, Chad threw 2 pick 6’s, both in losses (but only 1 during the regualr season and, ironically, 1 in the playoffs to Assante Samuels). I only mention this because I don’t know what an inordinately high number of pick 6’s is or what is the winning percentage of a team whose QB throws a pick 6. I don’t have a big sample, so I don’t know, but Favre’s Jets record was .500, while Chad/KC lost each game in which they threw a pick 6. I want to see far fewer INTs, but I don’t think that Favre’s INTs directly and adversely affected the defense as much as some here have supposed. Favre threw 10 INTs in his 9 wins and 12 INTs in his 7 losses. For instance, Big Ben threw 10 of his 15 INTs in 4 losses and Pittsburgh’s defense was no. 1 in the NFL. I’m guessing that it wasn’t Favre’s INTs as much as the fact that he stopped tossing TDs that cost the Jets’ defense more.
This defense should be much better because Rex wants to force the offense to react to his pressure defense. If the pressure is unpredictable, the offense will be on it’s heels. I thought Mangini came up with great game plans, but if the offense changed its tendencies, he was poor at adapting. The 49ers game was a good example last season. Kerry Rhodes said that the 49ers threw a different wrinkle at them with Bruce’s crossing patterns and the Jets didn’t know how to react. Basically, Martz out-foxed Mangini. Because the Jets defense will be based on pressure coming from different areas, Rex’s defense should be better able to adapt to neutralize a particular play, especially a crossing pattern which needs time to develop.
The defense should be left alone. It should grow on its own. Ryan had an attacking defense when he was a defensive coordinator in Maryland but Ray Lewis was there to help let the defense grow that is why he doesn’t take all the credit for their success. We are not letting the defense grow from last year by replacing all these parts and adding these players who have their potential already maxed out. Sheppard can only play as good as the cornerback opposite of him. Leonhard can only play as good as Rhodes and Douglas (and the choo choo train of guys behind him in depth) can play as good as Ellis on the other side. If Harris starts Scott can only play as good as him as Scott has no idea who Bryan Thomas or Calvin Pace is on the field on gameday. That is why he got familiar with the number 6th overall pick the Incredible Hulk to create a carbon copy of himself. Gholston can still change Thomas and Pace not as likely. Well like I said before I don’t think Harris is going to make it fellas.
Dear Fonzie,Your idea for patience and development is an important one.
Obviously Ryan thought long and hard about what kind of flowers with which to be patient and which with not to be… and he made those deletions and additions.
Coach Ryan obviously drew some different conclusions about the potential of this garden and decided to do some pruning.
That pruning will probably not reach it’s zenith until the free-agency period and draft are over next year when he has had a season’s go around with which to make a total evaluation.
For now,he has little idea on how these parts shall mesh.He just knew that some things could not work.
I agree with you that every player’s performance is affected by his immediate partners.However you are overstating the external aspect to the exclusion of the internal.What a player like Sheppard will or won’t do is unknown even to him at this point.
Dear Ramble,
Of all the coaches I’ve ever seen come into a job and exude the real auric qualities that auger longterm success it’s…Ryan.
Further Coach Ryan has something many other coaches don’t have.He brings amusement and fun to the game which goes a long way to create joy…as any part of football life is about losing.He also is eccentric and that means that we shall have the added sideshows of ascertaining,evaluating,and enjoying his originality to football sculpture.
I strongly suspect that the Jets are going to be successful under Coach Ryan but what I know is that they are already much more fun with which to be involved as a fan than they have been in ages.
Viva Coach Ryan!
Like a bed of Roses resituated further out to a more sunny spot Sheppard might do as other players have done in the Swan Song of his career and have his best moments…or he might continue to shrivel.
Dispositionally Sheppard seems more likely to create big moments than Revis because of his gambling nature. But in any case any projection positivie or negative is baseless.
We’ll see…
They will be good, as long as they stay healthy. They need to bolster their backups in most positions though. I think they are a little thin in that dept.