Preseason football is a fun thought experiment, when the team wins it is indicative of an incredibly fruitful season on the horizon, when the team loses “who cares its just preseason”. Both are justifiable, as football fans our job is not to rational. However, I am starting to get worried about Justin Fields and this New York Jets passing attack.
Lets lead with the obvious, yesterday’s performance was bad. And I’m not talking about the final score, who cares, when it was good-on-good the Jets’ goods struggled to move the ball.
“Quarterback Justin Fields and the passing offense were out of sync, which is not surprising,” ESPN’s Rich Cimini begrudgingly wrote. “They’ve been sputtering throughout most of training camp, with Fields unable to get the ball downfield to his wide receivers. Fields completed his first throw — a 4-yard flare to tight end Mason Taylor — then finished with five straight incompletions in two series of action.”
But last week’s drive was good, wasn’t it? Yes, kind of. While the running game did and always will look good, how much did Fields’ thee completions move you? When you put together the full body of work, Fields is 4-9 with 44 yards across the two games.
The main concern for Jets fans isn’t that Fields didn’t play the way they thought he would, it’s that he did.
“There are very real limits to your offense when your quarterback has a tendency to crumble under pressure and one wide receiver has to carry the load,” reads a John B. blog posted to Gang Green Nation. “We already knew this going into the game. When it doesn’t work, it will look like the struggle we saw during those two series.”
Jets’ Running Game Looked Great, Whatever That Means
The Jets running game came through again against an impressive New York Giants defensive line. That is obviously encouraging. The title of this article was almost Braelon Allen demands more touches after his second consecutive week logging more yards on the ground than Breece Hall.
However, Cimini put it best when he said “Yes, the Jets again showed potential in the running game, but it’s hard to be one-dimensional in the NFL.”
While it’s great to bottle up the run game and take it from town to town to marvel at all season, it’s impossible to feel comfortable in that being a winning formula. Take the Lions for example. They have a league best ground attack but that is because when you over compensate for the run game, Jared Goff can make you pay devastatingly so. Same goes for the Eagles and Super Bowl MVP Jalen Hurts.
Fields doesn’t have to be a seven step drop back surgeon, but at the very least he has to make you pay when you commit to stopping the run. If he can’t consistently do that, this season will struggle to get its wheels off the ground.
Jets’ Offensive Line Mauled
One thing that does translate no matter where you go is an offensive line full of maulers. It looks like the Jets young tackles are just that.
While the pass blocking sets left some to be desires, any time you can run the ball on 10 out of 12 plays and gain 80 yards in a single drive it means your offensive line is moving bodies.
Armand Membou had his struggles in his second ever appearance, but Olu Fashanu and Joe Tippman really set the tone for me as a viewer.
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