Numbers and Off-Season
| Weighted DVOA Offense | 19th |
| Weighted DVOA Defense | 32nd |
| Offense — Early Down Success | 23rd — Run 14th, Pass 29th |
| Offense — Explosive Play Rate | 19th |
| Defense — Explosive Play Rate | 32nd Pass, 25th Run |
| Key Additions | C.J. Uzomah TE, Tyler Conklin TE, Laken Tomlinson IOL, Solomon Thomas IDL, Jacob Martin EDGE, D.J. Reed CB, Jordan Whitehead S, Greg Zuerlein K, |
| Key Departures | Jamison Crowder WR, Keelan Cole WR, Ryan Griffin TE, Morgan Moses T, Folorunso Fatukasi IDL, Blake Cashman LB, Marcus Maye S |
| Re-signed Players | Joe Flacco QB, Mike White QB, Tevin Coleman RB, Braxton Berrios WR, Dan Feeney IOL, Connor McDermott T, Nathan Shepard IDL, Lamarcus Joyner S, |
| Key Draft Picks | Sauce Gardner CB, Garrett Wilson WR, Jermaine Johnson II EDGE, Breece Hall RB, Jeremy Ruckert TE |
Narrative
Quarterback
I am a pure Zach Wilson hater, mainly because Wilson’s heat chart in college was entirely based on verticals and mesh-style drag routes. Maybe it’s because my brother always gashed me that way in Madden, but it feels like playing the QB position on easy mode; why read defenses when you can just outrun them for easy completions across the middle or throw it up on outmatched corners? Lo and behold, Wilson entered the NFL and found that playing this way is not particularly bountiful when your team isn’t superior to every scheduled opponent. Wilson’s PFF heat map shows that the Jets did indeed run routes under 5 yards across the middle far more frequently than other teams and ran verticals past 15 yards somewhat more often. Meanwhile, the areas between 5 and 15 yards outside of the hashmarks were ice cold. Wilson even looked lost in said mesh game, notching a 50.8 passer rating on the throws that were his college bread and butter. When kept clean in the pocket, Wilson’s 79.1 QB rating was absolute garbage, but that’s better than when Wilson was blitzed, notching a 51.9 rating in such situations. Yuck! In an almost linear way, he was worse the longer he took to throw a ball: Wilson threw 32% of his passes after holding the ball for 3.1 seconds or longer, and he had a 50.2 rating in such situations. PFF charted 44% of his passes as accurate, 32nd in the league. Trevor Lawrence, who had similarly bad numbers the longer he held the ball and also did so far too often in a bad offense, still managed a 54% accurate rating. Among other rookies, Mac Jones hit 60.1% accurate, Davis Mills hit 60.5%, Justin Fields 50%, and Trey Lance did not qualify for scoring. 44% is otherworldly bad: the kid wasn’t accurate and does not have the offensive line to blame for such poor mechanics. Blitzes leave teams vulnerable against accurate and mechanically-sound QBs, which is why most QBs tend to make teams pay by getting scores against the blitz at a league-average rate of 4.8% of blitzed throws to 3.8% of non-blitzed throws. Wilson failed to score a single TD against the blitz. All year.
It’s ugly for the kid, and his supporting cast and situation helped him not one single bit. For one, Wilson played the Panthers (23rd ranked DVOA defense), Broncos (21), Patriots (4) twice, Titans (8), Falcons (29), Texans (25), Eagles (26), Saints (2), Dolphins (10), Jaguars (28), Buccaneers (12), and Bills (3). Wilson played 6 of his 13 starts against top 10 defenses, and the Jets finished with Football Outsiders’ toughest schedule in terms of defenses played. The Bills, Dolphins, and Patriots all fielded top 10 defenses in efficiency this season and, unfortunately for Wilson, probably look to do the same next year. The Jets had 9 games below 61 pass blocking grades from PFF (a well below average grade), so general inconsistency there played a role in Wilson’s struggles. They finished the year with a 29th ranking in receiving grade, certainly poor, and upgrading the pass catchers for Wilson was of paramount importance for the team this year. The team upgraded through rookie Garrett Wilson, veteran TEs C.J. Uzomah and Tyler Conklin, and rookie TE Jeremy Ruckert as a run-blocker, not to mention sensational rookie RB Breece Hall to take further pressure off Wilson by building a run game. All of these new pieces plug in around the competent and physical Corey Davis and the electric rookie Elijah Moore. Will that be enough to allow Wilson the room to work out his disastrous mechanics in important situations? We’ll see.
Coaching
How did Robert Saleh fail so badly in instituting a successful defense last year? Saleh, a much-lauded coach out of San Francisco, was hired after being the defensive architect of the opportunistic unit that almost won the Super Bowl in 2019 before taking a step back due to injury in 2020. Saleh’s units were known for featuring abject ferocity upfront: Arik Armstead, Nick Bosa, DeForest Buckner, and Dee Ford are all marquee names that Saleh coached up, and the rotational players earned their keep as well. Saleh was hired to coach a Jets team with its own strong pedigree on the defensive line: Quinnen Williams looked like a star in the making for Saleh to mold, with Folorunso Fatukasi and John Franklin-Myers as productive players inside in their own right. On the edge, Jordan Jenkins and Tarell Basham were coming off decent seasons, though an upgrade was likely needed for at least one player. After hiring Saleh, the Jets signed Carl Lawson and Sheldon Rankins, as well as trading for Shaq Lawson, to shore up the edges, moved John Franklin-Myers around, and made a plan to feature the young defensive interior players. The results were disastrous: Fatukasi and Rankins looked lost in the new system in the run game, Quinnen Williams played 50 more snaps and got less pressure than his previous seasons, Carl Lawson missed the year with injuries, and Shaq Lawson gave the team much less than he did Buffalo and Miami in the years prior. Saleh’s defensive front, while certainly not a feared unit, looked actively bad and poorly coached, with many players shockingly worse than when they were in the antiquated Gregg Williams system under Adam Gase. Jets fans should be worried: as bad as Zach Wilson was, the head coach looked overmatched in his position of expertise, and that is always a bad sign (think Adam Gase’s poor QBs). The national media tends to blame poor personnel, likely because Saleh seems like a nice guy and a charismatic leader; I believe there should be more alarm bells based on the regression from former contributors. Elsewhere, former star Marcus Maye fell apart in coverage: with Saleh failing to invest the top 3 Jets from the 2020 defense, one has to worry about the culture on defense. Maye and Fatukasi are gone now, and Carl Lawson comes back with some new lauded rookies and a few high-priced FAs. If Saleh’s defense bottoms out again, there are reasons to believe he won’t be long for the top job.
Offensively, Mike LaFluer is a Shanahan disciple in San Francisco, serving as the pass game coordinator in a co-offensive coordinator situation with Mike McDaniel through 2020 under Kyle Shanahan’s play-calling. LaFluer is just 35, younger than backup QB Joe Flacco, and has a lot to prove this year: was he the fresh-faced product of the Kyle Shanahan tree that coasted off of the success of others, as many others have proven to be? His first job in the NFL was 2014, and it took 3 years for him to become a position coach. In contrast, Mike McDaniel was interning in the NFL from 2005 to 2008, getting his first position coach gig in 2013. Mike’s brother Matt got his first NFL gig in 2008 and coached QBs as early as 2010. The whole thing screams nepotism, and the reality is that what shook loose from the 49ers tree for the Jets in 2020 has yet to bear fruit. The Jets offense and defense rank somewhere from below average to the doldrums of the league, and the coaches are hoping that, like Brian Flores in 2020, a massive treasure trove of draft assets will allow the team to improve enough for Saleh and LaFluer to impose their own system and culture up and down the roster. Do they have the innovative playcalling to do so? Do they have the right QB? 2022 will be a major inflection point for sure.
Offense
On both sides of the ball, a team fresh off of a 2021 makeover endures another full makeover, this time with a reliance on a king’s ransom worth of draft picks. On offense, Garrett Wilson and Breece Hall lead the way, and both rookies will try to stake a claim as the first exciting Jets skill position player since…Brandon Marshall in 2015? Curtis Martin in the 2000s? Even when the Jets fielded passable to good to nearly-great teams during the Rex Ryan era, the Jets simply did not put exciting pieces on the football field. As a passing team, the Jets PFF receiving and passing grades have been ugly: their receiving grades since 2015 are 20th in the NFL in 2015, then 30th, 19th, 27th, 16th, 31st, and finally 29th this year. Passing grades are similar during those years, coming in at 26th, 30th, 26th, 28th, 27th, 32nd, and ultimately 29th last year. In the modern NFL, the reason the Jets aren’t worth discussing is that they have not fielded a competitive or exciting team through the air in nearly a decade. That, more than anything, was the reason that I relished the fan conversation around the Jets drafting an offensive tackle, as they’d be shooting themselves in the foot again. Unlike Tua, Zach Wilson was often adequately protected, and the line has only improved since then. Laken Tomlinson enters from the 49ers, where he was PFF’s 13th best guard after grading as the 8th a year before. He’s a beacon of consistency, well above average in both the thriving 49ers run game and in pass protection. Connor McGovern was a pleasant surprise at center last year, and Alijah Vera-Tucker will move to the right guard spot after logging over a thousand snaps as a highly-regarded rookie on the left side. Vera-Tucker, however, was lauded for his versatility as a draft prospect, and has the chance to prove it. This is certainly one of the most intimidating interiors of an offensive line in the league right now. At tackle, question marks remain because 2020 draft pick Mekhi Becton fell apart due to injury and weight gain last year. Becton, who looked like a surefire top 5 tackle as a rookie, suffered a knee injury and went up from his college playing weight of 363 to reportedly north of 400 pounds. While Becton is a freakishly good athlete at 363 pounds, that kind of gain left him unable to play full games, and 2021 featured a number of odd press conferences that gave the impression that the weight rather than the knee kept Becton from the field. Then, in February, Saleh said that Becton must “reassert himself into the starting lineup,” as George Fant was remarkably good as the replacement at tackle. Right now, Gregg Rosenthal of NFL.com projects a line that features Fant sticking on the left side and Becton joining on the right, but that could be swapped as both players are versatile.
Becton’s concerns were part of the Jets fan desire to get a tackle, but the Jets wisely avoided such an endeavor, and that leads us right back to Garrett Wilson. Wilson and Chris Olave became the first WR teammates to both be named 1st team All-American in the same season, and they compare pretty clearly to Jaylen Waddle and Devonta Smith from the year before: Wilson is a speed guy with home run ability (the Waddle) while Olave was an absolute technician as a route runner (Smith), but both guys can run a damn route (great work, Brian Hartline)! Wilson is a perfect complement to what the Jets have at receiver: Elijah Moore played out wide for most of his snaps, but he’s a much better slot receiver at 5’9” with ridiculous quickness and Corey Davis is a prototypical big-guy-contested-catch-winner (think Devante Parker). Davis needs to be better after 6 drops set a new career high in only 9 starts, and both guys need to stay healthy, as there’s not much depth out wide. But the team is only in need of a field-stretching Z receiver that lines up off the line of scrimmage to avoid press, and takes the top off of the defense. Wilson’s blazing 4.38 40 speed and excellent tape suggests that the Jets have their own Tyreek Hill-esque project to believe in. At RB, the Jets already found some solid play from Michael Carter and 49ers free agent Tevin Coleman, who the team re-signed to a second one-year deal. Both players flashed well behind an offensive line that played with physicality. The logic, then, of devoting the 36th overall pick to Breece Hall at a position the team just spent a 4th rounder on the year before, is that a DOMINANT running game (rather than a passable one or a better tackle) will be needed to unlock consistency from Zach Wilson. Hall is an absolute monster as a runner, garnering unanimous All-American honors in 2020 and a consensus All-American performance in 2021 for Iowa State. There were few differences in his two seasons on the ground, as he ran for around 1,500 yards in both, but Hall devoted 2021 to showcasing his receiving ability, catching more passes for higher average yards per catch. In workouts, the kid ran a 4.39 40 while jumping 40 inches in a broad jump. In other words, the Jets have two rookies who are more explosive than any prospect they’ve invested in perhaps ever. The skill positions are good, if they stay healthy and if the scheme (mentioned above) doesn’t hold them back. At tight end, the team is suddenly dense with bodies: C.J. Uzomah and Tyler Conklin enter as free agents with high potential but less production with the Bengals and Vikings respectively. Neither can block. The Jets also drafted Jeremy Ruckert, who had little to do in the pass game with the aforementioned Wilson and Olave at Ohio State, but developed as the best run blocker in the TE class according to draft folks and he simply doesn’t drop passes. Think Durham Smythe for him: he probably has a similar role as a useful and dependable piece.
Defense
When Saleh took the reins, Jets fans looked at Nick Bosa, Arik Armstead, and DeForest Buckner and figured that they had a masterful coach for the defensive line. Such success has not come close to materializing, and Saleh has this year alone to revolutionize the defensive personnel. On the defensive line, Saleh’s supposed specialty, Quinnen Williams looks to return to form, as described above in the coaching section, and Sheldon Rankins, Jonathan Franklin-Myers, and Carl Lawson all return to this unit. In other words, this is the only unit other than QB expected to see consistency. While Gregg Rosenthal projects that unit to start, the Jets are (at the time of writing this) carrying 16 defensive linemen on the roster and say they plan to keep 10 and rotate like crazy, with the goal of having no player play more than 30 snaps a game. This is ultimately alarming news: Lawson and Williams have both shown the ability to play at a high level, even if last year was mostly disastrous, and Franklin-Myers is a swiss army knife for the line with the ability to kick on passing downs. I believe good players need to play to be impactful, and too much of a rotation can water down a unit. With that context in mind, the Jets drafted Jermaine Johnson II to be a pass rushing specialist that allows for more movement. Johnson is a good pass rusher without the elite explosiveness (his combine numbers were good, his tape is solid, but he’s a 23-year-old redshirt senior who wins with technique) who also will provide the units he plays on with good edge-setting. Johnson will probably anchor his own rotations, almost like a hockey unit or a basketball team signing a guy that can lead the backups at the end of the first quarter. It’s a weird setup, but this is how Saleh seems to be setting up rebound years for his young players. At linebacker, the Jets will attempt to salvage the career of C.J. Mosley, who went from one of the premier off-ball linebackers in the league for the Ravens to an injury-plagued 2019 (two starts, one hilarious pick six of Josh Allen) and a 2020 opt-out to an absolutely awful first year with Saleh (PFF ranked him 76th out of 87 qualifying linebackers). He didn’t do much right, but was especially culpable for an awful run defense. His partner, Quincy Williams, was essentially equally bad: between these defensive lineman and this linebacking group, Saleh may look like a fool again this year. They’re betting on depth and rebound seasons: as we know with the Dolphins, rarely a good bet over high-end talent.
Of course, Rome isn’t built in a day, and the Jets (wisely, I believe) chose to build their defense on the back-end, drafting Cincinnati phenom Ahmad “Sauce” Gardner 4th overall after his incredible combine. Dude did not allow a single TD to be thrown on him in his entire college career, albeit against players well below NFL talent. He has an absolutely otherworldly wingspan and plays a physical brand of football, elevating his draft status with a reputation as the press coverage expert in this year’s draft. Xavien is an interesting person to compare him to, as X was named the best press corner in the NFL by PFF in May: Sauce is 6’3” 190 with 33.5 inch arms and a 4.41 40 yard dash. Xavien came out at 6’0” (and he was deemed tall!) 205 with 31.25 inch arms and just a 4.58 40 yard dash. So Sauce is a guy that, physically, seems more cut-out for press coverage than our own elite Xavien, BUT Sauce did not do the agility workouts at the combine, and he’ll have his hands full with our quickness at receiver. Hill and Waddle will be interesting tests for the kid who is the new anchor of the Jets secondary. After starting his career as a slot guy, D.J. Reed signed a modest deal to start across from Sauce as the new Jets corner tandem. Reed was one of the few bright spots for the Seahawks defense over the last two years, allowing a passer rating against him of 76.2 in 2020 and 66 last year. Those numbers are elite, as are his grades for PFF over that period (14th of 121 corners in 2020 and 8th of 116 last year), but even PFF acknowledges he has probably over-performed. Still, he’s an excellent addition as a high-end number 2. With Sauce and Reed set to play together for the next three years, it’s clear the Jets took a lot of notes from Byron and X, and must be hoping for similar results at a bargain price. At nickel, Michael Carter II returns, which should concern Jets fans, as his most notable highlight was getting trucked by Tua (lol). At safety, LaMarcus Joyner was resigned to a one-year deal after managing only 9 snaps for the team last year before an elbow injury. He seems to be nothing more than a stopgap, but his backup Ashtyn Davis has been a draft disappointment (though his only two career INTs are both against Tua). The final piece of the Jets free agent makeover is in the stalwart and versatile Jordan Whitehead at safety: on the championship Buccaneers team, he served as an excellent run defender and competent deep defender. For Saleh, he will look to play the physical Kam Chancellor role in this Seattle-style defense. The defense is proof that the Jets are just midway through their rebuild: three huge upgrades in the secondary may grab headlines, but the Jets front 7 remains as concerning and uncertain as ever.
Special Teams
The Jets kicking situation was a hilarious nightmare last year, with Matt Ammendola losing the job after going 2-5 between 40 and 49 yards and 0-3 above 50 (Keaton will remember his antics from the MetLife Takeover, when both of his misses fueled Dolphins momentum swings). Replacement kicker Alex Kessman was only asked to kick two extra points, and he whiffed on both. They landed on Eddy Pinero, who was a fine 8/8 without long attempts. They look to solidify the position with GREG THE FREAKING LEG signed this year. Zuerlein was shakier this year than in previous years, going 30/36 last year on FGs, but his reputation for powerful kicks, including a career-high 61 yard FG, is welcome for a team that is nearing Bears-level of kicking misery. New Dolphins punter Thomas Morestead handled the first half of the year punting duties for the injured Braden Mann, and both acquitted themselves well, landing plenty of punts inside the 20. With an offense like that, you get good punting numbers!
How Do We Get The Dub?
The Jets are getting more hype than any time in the last few years. Outside of Zach Wilson, few positions leave you with a feeling of grand concern. That said, the dub can be achieved (and will likely be achieved) by the Dolphins ability to exploit a still-underwhelming defense and Zach Wilson. Two keys:
- Keep the blitz on: Wilson’s 51.9 passer rating when blitzed is a hilarious nightmare, and the defense (now in its 3rd year with similar system and personnel) is refined enough to have Wilson running for his life all day. There is a better run game in New York now, so the Phins will have to match physicality, loading up the box with the big guys and forcing Wilson to process quickly to win.
- Run the damn ball! Unlike other early season matchups against Baltimore, Cincinnati, Buffalo, and New England, this team still seems disastrously vulnerable in the run game. Mostert and Edmonds are tremendously fast, and are absolute mismatches for the undermanned linebacker group. OL will need to execute, as there is skill on the Jets DL if not 2021 production.
Week 5 – Dolphins 28, Jets 20
Week 18 – Dolphins 31, Jets 14
Dolphins 5-3
