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Time for some Friday Night Jets Whisper . . .
The Jets are 4-6 and still in AFC Wildcard contention.
“We still gotta chance,” Mo Claiborne said today.
Now if they lose on Sunday, I think their finished.
But a win over Carolina will keep hope alive for the Jets.
And getting Claiborne back from a foot injury will certainly help their chances against Carolina. Claiborne is a legit #1 cornerback when he’s healthy.
But is he healthy? He thought he was entering the Tampa Bay game, but had to exit early.
“He’s a lot better (than) from the week before,” Todd Bowles said about Claiborne.
The Jets don’t just need Claiborne out there, they need their other starting cornerback, Buster Skrine to play better. Now you all know how I feel about this situation. I believe Skrine should be a fourth or fifth corner and core special teams player (he’s great on special teams), but Todd Bowles is a big supporter of Skrine, so he’s going to stay in the starting lineup.
So dealing with Bowles world-view, and the fact that Skrine will continue to start, they clearly must get a higher level of play from him, and desperately need him to cut down on penalties. He currently has 11.
I asked Bowles today what he thought about Skrine’s 11 penalties.
“I don’t like penalties,” Bowles said.
I then asked him what he thought about Skrine recently telling the Star-Ledger and New York Post that his penalties “don’t bother him” because of his aggressive style of play.
“I know what he meant by it,” Bowles said. “We had that discussion. We have an understanding.”
So what did he mean?
I believe what he meant was you need to have a short memory at cornerback, so you can’t let penalties bother you because it will impact your play moving forward . . .
As the media walked out to practice today, we walked closely by an area Jets guard Brian Winters was doing extra stretching with large stretching bands.
I don’t like the gawk at players, but perhaps it looked like I was, because Winter said to me (and another reporter), “I’m not injured.”
I don’t think he liked that we might have been looking at him in the rehab area, but the way they led us out to the field, we literally walked right by where he was doing extra stretching with the trainers, with no other players participating.
Winters has a groin injury. He was limited in practice today and is listed as “questionable.”
Just like he was before the Tampa Bay game.
And I said it before, and I will say it again, Dakota Dozier probably should have started the Tampa Bay game for Winters. Why start a guard with a bad groin, against the Buccaneers star TD Gerald McCoy, when you have a healthy, capable backup in Dozier?
Todd Bowles has this thing about starters. He clearly feels when his trainers says a starter can play, he should start.
But while a guy can play, it doesn’t mean he’s 100 percent, and if you have a backup who is 100 percent, and who has starting ability like Dozier, why stand on ceremony?
But like Bowles said to me earlier in the year when I asked him about lineup changes, he said, “I have my starters.”
He’s very ardent about this.
November 24, 2017
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