Content available exclusively for subscribers
A heaping helping of OTA Whispers:
Joe Flacco threw a successful deep out to wide receiver turned tight end Lawrence Cager.
Two observations from this play:
Flacco can still sling it, and Cager has great wheels for a tight end (he also caught a TD from Mike White in a red-zone drill), but does need to bulk up a little to handle the blocking part of the job . . .
Zach Wilson seems to do well on plays that break down where he spots somebody downfield who is open, and uses his strong arm to get it down field, like on his pass to tight end Trevon Wesco for a long gain.
But he also took a lot of check downs today, which is fine, it’s better than a turnover, but remember, check-downs are plays the defense is generally willing to give you.
It seemed like sometimes when he was looking downfield for bigger chunk plays, he wasn’t necessarily trusting his eyes, and checked down a lot.
He needs to throw more with anticipation, like Flacco and White, and not wait for guys to flash open and then toss a rocket to the open guy.
Wilson is making progress, but still needs work on his progressions scans and becoming a full field reader. . .
As for that pass to Wesco, while it was a nice throw by Wilson, it might point to another issue – linebacker coverage. Wesco seemed to slip behind the linebackers in coverage, and this against the starters. The Jets need to take a quantum leap in linebacker coverage from last season to this one . . .
Rookie free agent linebacker D.Q. Thomas is listed at 6-2, 216 pounds, but certainly looks bigger than that. He didn’t look like an undersized linebacker to me – very thick in the lower body . . .
Flacco threw a pick today in practice on a downfield throw, but who cares?
There is nothing wrong with that in OTA. He was trying something, experimenting.
That is what you do in the spring practices, and that is why media practice stats are somewhat misguided, and probably affect some young quarterbacks, who don’t want to take chances because they don’t want to be called out by the media in attendance if that chance doesn’t work out. Spring practices are a lab to work on things, but with some people giving out style points, perhaps that impacts those experiments because some players don’t want to get ripped on Twitter for bad plays. That’s a shame . . .
Watching the offensive line drills, offensive line coach John Benton, and assistant offensive line coach, Ben Wilkerson, were working on a ton of techniques with the players, and it makes you wonder how much Mekhi Becton would benefit from these daily tutorials as a young lineman . . .
Jets had a little bit of a scare when rookie receiver Garrett Wilson went up for a fade pass on the left side of the end zone, and get slammed a little by a defensive back, and came up limping.
As much as teams try to avoid contact in these practices, sometimes it’s inevitable . . .
You have to wonder if the Jets will tweak their defensive scheme a little. Pete Carroll one of the forefathers of their scheme, has, brought in former Chicago Bears defensive coordinator Sean Desai to bring parts of Vic Fangio’s scheme to Seattle.
“I’ll tell you, we’ve been a little bit arrogant over the years, the way we play defense,” Carroll said. “Because we’ve been able to do it, just go ahead and play what we want to play. Remember how people just talk about… ‘All they do is play 3-deep. You know, they don’t play anything else. They must be stupid’? You know, we were killing it for years, so we just (kept doing it). It’s not that time right now.”
One problem for the Jets last year in their Carroll-like scheme is they were suspectable to misdirection plays since they are so aggressive shooting upfield, they bit on too many play-fakes.
It’s too early to tell if they are going to change, but they didn’t add any new defensive coaches from the outside, like Carroll did with Desai, so perhaps not. We will see.
June 8, 2022
Premium will return by 9:30 pm on Thursday.