When the NFL
schedule was released, the Thursday Night match-up between the Patriots and the
Jets appeared to have no juice whatsoever.
Nearly everyone had written off the Jets as the biggest three-ring
circus this side of the Ringling Brothers, which meant that the mere presence
of the great and powerful hooded sweatshirt and the GQ good looks of Tom Brady
on the other sideline would be good enough for a New England victory. As Lee Corso would say, not so fast my friends. Since the release of the schedule, the
Patriots’ superiority has slowly been eroded by the arrest of Aaron Hernandez,
the lingering injury situation of Rob Gronkowski, and the week one injuries to
Danny Amendola and Shane Vereen. Added
to this list of woes was the March defection of Wes Welker to the Denver
Broncos. Now the great Tom Brady is
being asked to win on a short week with Julian Edelman, a poor man’s Danny
Amendola, Josh Boyce, Kenbrell Thompkins, Zach Sudfeld, and Michael
Hoomanawanui at his disposal. This
ragtag bunch combined for a mere 12 receptions in Week One and now they face an
underrated Jets defense coming off a hope inducing victory over Tampa Bay. The odds makers have installed the Patriots
as double-digit favorites, but the huge margin seems to be based more on New
England’s past than its present. Here
are three reasons why the Jets will cover the point spread and quite possible
steal a victory in Foxboro.
The Jets pass defense is its best defensive
asset.
In 2012, the
Jets defense finished in the top ten in a number of passing categories,
including yards per game, yards per attempt, and quarterback rating. It is true that Tom Brady has had his way
with the Jets defense in recent memory, but they actually held him to his
second lowest yards per attempt for the 2012 season in their first match-up
last year. The Jets are coming off a
solid performance against Tampa Bay, which has more overall offensive talent
than the Patriots will be able to deploy Thursday Night. Meanwhile, Brady had some major struggles
generating big plays in the passing game against the fairly decent pass defense
of the Buffalo Bills. Now he is faced
with an even more daunting prospect of moving the ball in the air without the
services of Amendola and Vereen, who caught 59% of his completions in Week One
and received nearly 50% of Brady’s targets.
Although it is probably foolish to pick against Brady too often, it
feels like the cumulative impact of all the losses on offense have reached the
tipping point. For this reason, the Jets
above-average pass defense should be expected to make life very difficult on
the Patriots offense. It would not be
surprising to see Brady’s yards per attempt under six for the second
consecutive week because he has even fewer options to attack defenses down the
field.
In 2009 and
2010, the Jets perfected the winning formula of protecting a young quarterback
with a top-notch running game and a punish defense. In both seasons, they were in the top five in
rushing yards per game and total defense.
In an attempt to protect Geno Smith, the Jets should try their very best
to rekindle the Ground & Pound identity.
They certainly appear to have the defensive side of the equation
covered, but the major question is can the offense run the football
consistently to control the time of possession, shorten the football game, and
put Smith into manageable down and distance situations. They were a middle of the pack running team
last season and they didn’t start very well in 2013 with only 90 yards rushing
against the Buccaneers. With it being a
short week and the first road game of Smith’s NFL career, the Jets will commit
to the run in an attempt to repeat some of the successes that Buffalo had on
the ground against New England, as well as to protect their young
signal-caller. If they can run the ball
30 or more times with an average of at least four yards per carry, then they
will definitely keep the game close into the fourth quarter and give them
another chance to steal a victory late.
The Jets will make Brady uncomfortable in
the pocket.
In Week One,
the Buffalo defense was like a swarm of bees buzzing around Tom Brady to great
effect. They only sacked him twice, but
they hit him another seven times and generally made it very hard for Brady to get
into a rhythm with his new receivers.
The constant pressure also made Brady have to get rid of the football
more quickly than he would have otherwise wanted, which greatly inhibited the
Patriots’ ability to drive the football down the field and forced them to put
together long drives in order to score points.
The Jets will build on a strong debut from their defensive line in week
one and continue to make Brady feel like he’s playing quarterback in a phone
booth. The idea is not to just bang Brady around for 60 minutes, but to also
force his young wide receivers to make the right decisions about when to break
off their routes in reaction to pressure from the Jets. The hope, from New York’s perspective, is
that the youngsters get overwhelmed by the big stage and make enough mistakes
to slow down the Patriots offense. Another
goal for the Jets is to apply enough pressure that a frustrated Brady tries too
hard to make a play with his arm and instead throws an interception or
two. Admittedly, frustrating a veteran
like Brady is unlikely, but this would be the Holy Grail of outcomes for New
York.
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