The Jets’ early season performance vs. their expectations
Coming into the 2019 season, the New York Jets had a lot of expectations. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves; certainly no one realistically expected a Super Bowl season, but certainly climbing out of the pit of 3 consecutive losing seasons seemed viable. Maybe play meaningful games and challenge for a Wild Card berth, even. Let’s say, to be perfectly fair, that something like a 9–7 season seemed reasonably attainable, if not likely.
And why not?
Four years of folly — also known as the Bowles and Maccagnan administration — gave way to… well, more folly. A widely panned hiring of Adam Gase after flaming out in Miami gave way to him, predictably, backstabbing the GM (Maccagnan) that contributed to hiring him, continuing the cycle of idiocy. But, somehow, miraculously, they finally got something right, hiring Joe Douglas as their new GM. They still didn’t get it completely right (Gase and Douglas have contracts of differing length and neither is the other’s boss), but, crucially, these two guys actually wanted to work together. So unlike the Rex Ryan/John Idzik debacle, or the awkward arranged marriage of Todd Bowles and Mike Maccagnan, there seems to be much less chance of these two sniping at each other and trying to cut out the legs from beneath.
They share a vision of the future and similar philosophies on constructing a football team.
They don’t hate each other.
This a new phenomenon at One Jets Drive. Harmony (or something like it) set in Florham Park over the summer, as a new coach and general manager have a young franchise quarterback to mold and build around.
So the honeymoon phase began. Sunshine and rainbows abound. Things would be different this time. Then, with the advent of training camp, people got to talking.
With Certified Offensive Guru™ (and Quarterback Whisperer) Adam Gase conducting this offense, and tutoring face-of-the-franchise Sam Darnold, we would have a bona fide quarterback for the first time since Joe Namath.
With the import of high profile players such as Le’Veon Bell, CJ Mosley, Quinnen Williams, Jamison Crowder, and Kelechi Osemele, they would finally have some star power to ascend to the next level
Suffice to say, the talk flowed out of camp. Turns out, talk might be cheap. Here are some interesting quotes I recall from the summer, and how they measure up to the Jets’ performance through two weeks of the 2019 season. Agonizing, pathetic losses, mind you.
“We’re going to do some fun things out there with all the tempo and different things we can do,” [QB Sam] Darnold said. “It’ll be fun to watch us and hopefully we’re going to put up a lot of points.”
Now I’m inclined to cut Sam some slack here, for a few reasons.
While I’m sure he has some ability to audible at the line and make calls in no huddle situations, he’s a second year quarterback with a new head coach. A new head coach who calls the offensive plays and builds the scheme and game plan weekly. A new head coach who is a self-avowed control freak. So Adam Gase is the most responsible for the game plan that unfolded Week 1 against the Bills.
Adam Gase ran a fairly vanilla offense during the pre-season, and rightly so, since you don’t want to give away all the tricks up your sleeve before the games matter, but they played a fair bit of up tempo/no huddle with the starting unit in. There was none of that in this game until they were in desperation mode, down one point at the end of the game. Running up tempo forces the defense to compromise in a lot of ways: they can’t substitute in defensive linemen to keep them fresh, they have to simplify their play calls to fit time constraints and the distance between players forced to line up instead of huddle, and they can’t mask their pre-snap formations or intentions, which makes the job on the quarterback and offensive line easier. By slowing down and huddling, the Bills were able to marshal their best defense on a play-by-play basis.
Furthermore, the offensive play calls were still just as vanilla — if not MORE so — as they were in the pre-season. There was a series of straight up zone runs. There was about a billion short passes and checkdowns (Jamison Crowder had less than 100 yards on 14 catches). There were only a couple of screens called, despite the Bills blitzing throughout the contest.
So, no, they didn’t play up tempo. They didn’t do all different things. They weren’t fun to watch. They didn’t score a lot of points: a total of 8, the same as the defense in this game.
The less said about Week 2, the better. With Sam Darnold ailing — from mononucleosis, of all things — they’re onto their s̶e̶c̶o̶n̶d̶ ̶Q̶B̶ ̶T̶r̶e̶v̶o̶r̶ ̶S̶i̶e̶m̶i̶a̶n̶ I mean third QB Luke Falk. We’re obviously looking at a severe handicap to the Jets’ success. That being said, the only wrinkle I noticed that they added in Week 2 was starting the game with Le’Veon Bell in the Wildcat. They proceeded to run the most boring variety of that offense: no motion, no play fake, no option, just a straight dive up the middle for 4 yards. Perfect
“He’s such a talent, not only running the ball, but catching the ball out of the backfield and lining up wide and running routes,” [QB Sam] Darnold said. “I’m excited to see him live in a game and I know a lot of guys are as well.”
Not everything was bad Week 1 (even if most of it was). Le’Veon Bell brought it; he played every offensive snap in this game. He scored their lone offensive touchdown, as well as their lone successful PAT (curse you Kaare Vedvik), and was generally the only offensive player who pulled his own weight, beyond the aforementioned Crowder.
Thus far, with the Jets handcuffed by a bad offensive line, bad playcalling, and a compromised Quarterback room, Bell is the lone bright spot. Heavily featured both running and catching the ball, the entire offense will run through Bell until Darnold is cleared to play. He has been up to the task so far, receiving significantly more touches than the Jets should be foisting upon him this early in the season. While there are no better options, I fear they’ll run him into the ground at this rate, risking his efficacy late this year and next year, the second year of his Free Agency mega-deal.
“He’s not the kind of quarterback that you’re looking to protect. You’re kind of looking to turn him loose and let him work the offense and get on the ball and use the running game to help him. There’s no limitations on him. And it’s fun as a play caller.” — Adam Gase
Jamison Crowder was targeted 17 (!!) times for 14 catches… for only 99 yards. That’s breathtakingly inefficient. Darnold’s yards per attempt was a minuscule 4.3. That was dead last among qualified passers (minimum of 14 pass attempts Week 1), half a yard behind the next lowest. Darnold threw a total of 2 passes beyond 20 yards in the air (a distance generally accepted as a deep throw), and neither was completed. Despite investing in Le’Veon Bell — who performed very well in his first game action since the playoffs in January of 2018 — they only threw out of play action 3 times, only one of which was completed for a short gain. His average depth of target for the game was only 5.9 yards past the line of scrimmage. [Depth of target and pass distribution stats are pulled from NoCheckdowns.com]
Week 2 saw Darnold out, and a combination of Trevor Siemian and Luke Falk under center. Siemian was totally overmatched in less than a half of football, exiting with a brutal looking lower leg injury; he’s out for the year.
Falk, on the other hand, wasn’t embarrassingly terrible. After running the ball 5 consecutive times, with Falk coming in cold mid drive, they began to run a semblance of an offense. That meant that, even though he only played 2.5 quarters Monday night, Falk threw one more time off Play Action (I can’t find reliable charting data for Siemian’s time in the game) than Darnold did the week prior, including a deep shot completion to Robby Anderson.
Of course, they still only scored 3 points (cheers to new Kicker Sam Ficken for demonstrating basic competence), so let’s not plan any parades for Falk just yet. Still, while it’s hard to expect Gase will run a wide open offense with his 3rd Quarterback, there’s a fundamental lack of creativity to the plays he is calling, despite his status as a so called genius. And let’s not forget: Luke Falk may be a marginal NFL QB from a physical traits standpoint, but he set records as a starter for Mike Leach at Washington State, who is an ACTUAL offensive genius.
Long story short (too late, I know), it’s high time to put up or shut up. This was all just offense based — there was a MUCH longer version of this piece including defense related talk — but the defense has done better than I anticipated so far. A strong performance through 3 quarters in Week 1 was undone by a total and complete implosion after CJ Mosley got injured. Week 2 was hardly a dominant performance, but Cleveland didn’t exactly blow the doors off the Jets until a big play (on a complete schematic coverage bust leaving Odell Beckham Jr., of all people, uncovered) later in the game. This game said a lot more about Cleveland’s enduring offensive struggles against a sub par Jets defense than it does about the Jets, to this point in the season.
The offense, though, despite missing Darnold in Week 2, has few excuses. It’s about more than just points scored and overall success. There are significant, fundamental flaws in what the Jets are doing offensively.
The offensive line has under-performed, from a physical and mental stand point. The starting 5 spent precisely 0 snaps together, in practice or games, until the final week of the pre-season; they have not gelled thus far. But more than just the physical and communication aspects, there are no schematic adjustments being made in game to stem the constant flow of free rushers wreaking havoc in the backfield. Myles Garrett, one of the top young edge rushers in the NFL, was left unblocked multiple times Monday night.
The route combinations on pass plays are bland. The use of pre-snap motion, formational diversity, and misdirection post snap is utterly uninspired. The head scratching lack of Play Action in the passing game is infuriating.
Consider this chart from USA Today:
Across the board, by every statistical measure, passing out of Play Action is more efficient and leads to greater overall success in the passing game. You can argue until you’re blue in the face over whether or not you need to “Establish the Run”, but you cannot argue the certifiable FACT that Play Action passing leads to more points scored. An offense that has to lean heavily on Bell, whether Darnold is starting or not, that is having some success running the ball (despite the deck being stacked against him), should be punishing teams off of Play Action. It’s flagrantly offensive that Gase is refusing to dial these plays up.
So talk is cheap. All the flowery coverage from training camp about the trick plays, flea flickers, and triple reverses employed by Gase against Gregg(ggg) Williams’ defense are utterly devoid of value until one of them shows up on game day. The wide open, exciting passing game is a myth until they show us otherwise.
Adam Gase, and the Jets, need to shut up until they put up some damn points
