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A few things to dive into today . . .
The Jets and Sam Darnold like to run bootlegs to the right side quite a bit. Darnold, and a lot of young quarterbacks, like this play because it cuts the field in half, and makes you only read half the field.
The problem for the Jets now is that opponents, like Miami last week, and even more so Cleveland on Thursday night, are flat-out sitting on this play. Wouldn’t you?
Bill Belichick likes Thursday night football because he loves the 10 days you get after the game to prepare for the next opponent.
So we will learn a lot about Jeremy Bates as an offensive coordinator – he clearly needs to get back into the lab and tweak his approach with the rookie quarterback.
There are only so many bootleg rights and bubble screens you can call before the opponent basically won’t give them to you anymore . . .
Remember one thing about Sam Darnold’s excellent performance in the season-opener in Detroit – that should be your best game plan of the season. You have four months to game-plan for that game after the schedule comes out. It leads to so may surprises for opponents. So you can game-plan the heck out of this game, which can sometimes cover-up the weaknesses of a young quarterback who is still learning. The element of surprise is a huge factor in Week One.
You saw in Weeks Two and Three, with a game of film on Darnold, the Dolphins and Browns had much better defensive game plans to deal with him.
Darnold was very tough on himself after the Jets loss to Cleveland.
“I just made stupid mistakes in the fourth quarter and some missed opportunities throughout the whole game. I just have to play better, and that’s on me,” he said.
I don’t blame him at all. Not at all. I’ve always felt that when you play a young player before he’s ready, it’s on the decision-makers, not the player.
Darnold is a 21-year-old guy, who came out after the red-shirt sophomore year, who is doing the best he can. I refuse to rip him for his rough play the last couple of weeks.
Remember one thing about Baker Mayfield, he came out after his senior year, and was a four-year college starter – one at Texas Tech and three at Oklahoma.
Andrew Luck was a four-year starter at Stanford. That helps . . .
Sometimes people would say when you talk about benching a starter – who else are you going to start?
Well that isn’t the case at Darron Lee’s spot. The Jets have two very good players in back of him in Neville Hewitt and Kevin Pierre-Louis. At the very least, the should platoon with Lee. But Todd Bowles seems to very committed to Lee, so this is a long-shot . . .
Isaiah Crowell is a very talented player, but he’s had some maturity issues over the years, and you saw that in Cleveland with his celebration penalty in Cleveland. Remember, he was thrown out of the University of Georgia.
But aside from the ridiculous penalty, he also seemed to blow a gasket after a couple of run plays that weren’t blocked well. You could see he was yelling.
That’s far from ideal. Linemen don’t want to hear that.
September 21, 2018
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