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Evening Gang Green Gangsters, we are 24 hours away from pre-season week two against our cross town foe Giants.
The starters are believed to be scheduled to play for a whole half and as such we have a little more time to look for certain things. Pop your lists in the comments, but here is mine:
1) Lets keep em clean!
I was really disappointed in the performance of the offensive line in week one, as was every Jets fan on the planet. I was also very disappointed in the blocking of our tight ends, Cumberland was the main culprit........Vernon Gholston could have gone to town on this guy with his blocking last week. If we want to see improvement from our franchise QB, then we have to give him time to make his reads and find his target. It's impossible to judge Sanchez when he is being hit before he completes his drop.
2) Cover the Middle
Last year we watched as numerous players in the slot got isolated on one of our linebackers and a 15+ yard completion was a result. We saw it in week one with Bengals streaking away from Calvin Pace and Bart Scott. I want to see more Demario Davis on 3rd down and I want to see the safeties coming up to pop a few people who want to go over the middle. You pop these guys, even if they catch it.....next time their thinking about taking that hit and that's where drops happen.
3) Ground And Pound
Has this started yet? to be absolutely fair this is a unit problem not just a running backs problem. We need to keep the QB clean so teams can't pack the box, the line need to get a good push and the running backs need to do their work. My concern is that Greene and Powell don't look like backs that can make people miss, it's early and we all know Greene can run over some people, but I want to see us really pound the rock tomorrow and hopefully we average a little more per carry this week than we did last week. Also, feed my boy Joe McKnight the ball more.
Keep in mind that the play-book is as vanilla as it can get, and it's just the pre-season. I'm not saying what we are seeing is what we will see against Buffalo in week one, but I just want to see signs of the above.