Offense Helping To Improve The Defense

Cimini had a nice list of things we learned from Minicamp, and now we are playing the waiting game to training camp, we'll be having a look into one or two of aspects mentioned. An interesting one that I want to start with is:

5. New OC Tony Sparano was good for morale. Let me explain. His desire to become a physical, run-oriented team created a sense of identity on offense. The defensive players also liked Sparano because he forced them to play faster (he constantly harped on increasing the tempo) and he showed them new looks, forcing them to adjust on the fly. The defense was bored by Brian Schottenheimer's offense because, after so many years, it became predictable to them. It lulled them to sleep and they probably didn't get as much out of practice as they should've.

This is an interesting thought and something I hadn't really considered. I forget sometimes that the defense gets it's practise reps by going up against the offence that we put out on the field on a Sunday. I don't think many people enjoyed Brian Schottenheimers multiple motion/shifts, 5 yard dump off passes. It was an offence that I just didn't see many other teams running, I can't think of any other NFL offence that uses as much pre-snap movement as Brian's. So Im starting to think that the offence that struggled last year, probably had a hand in the defence not being as sharp as they should have been. Obviously there are a lot of factors in play, but I'm confident this was one of them.

So now we have a brand new offence, a power running one with an identity. A offence that I expect to live off the play-action a lot this yeam. The defence is getting a real test every single practise, we have two quarterbacks who bring two very different aspects to the table, we have short threats, medium threats and long threats. We are changing it up and keeping the defence playing quickly. Not only am I confident that Tony Sparano will be improving the offensive output with this team, I'm also confident that he'll do his part to make the Jets defence one of the best in the league.