Jets Film Review: The Defense needs a Complete Overhaul

The film room is the most hated room in all of football when you have a bad game. There you can see every little fault, imperfection and downright failure that lead to a score. With that being said, the film shows us just how bad the defense was stopping the run in key spots.

Let’s take a look at the calamity of errors that lead to the first Cardinals TD. We have to tip your cap some to the Arizona offense who called a perfect play call taking advantage of Sheldon Richardson playing ILB.

It’s a simple power play to the left with a pulling guard and the rest of the line blocking back from the center to the backside. The left tackle is the only block here that is truly different— that’s a kickout block where you force the OLB (Lee?!!) outside. There’s a natural hole right where the play is going to run.

Lee totally fails at setting the edge, pulling a Aaron Maybin at his worst impression by running upfield. Richardson blitzes A gap taking him out of the play. Basically it comes down to Erin Henderson to float sideways and stuff the gap. Right out of the box Bowles defense has been outfoxed.

Lee fails to get a holding call as he flings himself around the outside. The guard gets around the line and has Henderson as his man. Truth be told Henderson beats the block mostly, but the little chip is enough to send him off balance enough to make a very poor tackle attempt. The inside lineman never gets off his block. Right away this is big play potential based off the failure up front.

After the LOS is broken a few things happen to go from long gain to TD: Gilchrist gets caught inside filling the gap through the center of the field. Revis ends up getting stalk blocked into Gilchrist.

Other failures on this play: Buster Skrine can’t get off his block and a lane is formed to the outside Calvin Pryor playing the other safety runs up to the line. There’s no one deep, with most of the weakside secondary playing cutback that never comes. And there’s no need. Simply on this Todd Bowles had an idea for a concept to confuse and offense, instead the defense was shredded by a simple play call.

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Henderson factors in on the other rush TD as well. This is simple power football and the Jets slow to react while getting dominated up front.

The play is again simple. It’s an iso, with the men in front running simple one on one blocks. The key block to me is the inside lineman who voluntarily gives up his responsibility and Henderson for failing to fill that gap.

The honest truth is there wasn’t much Henderson could do with the NG taking himself out. There’s already a huge hole and Henderson would have to make the block whiff to have any hope.

The last image sums this up well: another huge lane for a TD.

Make that two failures.

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As you can imagine it doesn’t get much better with the next rushing TD. Henderson this time gets a bigger share of the blame, but that inside tackle: Woof.

This one is again direct power football, albeit a hole to the outside of the last one. One frame in and you can tell there’s issues. The tackle decides to slam the inside. That opens up the gap directly near Henderson.

This time Henderson Kamikazes himself filling the gap. Problem is the Cards 84 basically just has to stalk block him to create a larger hole to the outside. Speaking of the outside, our other players fail to get off blocks.

The image below is just depressing and I have no words.

That is how you score when a defense basically hands you a TD. Nothing special other than solid execution from the Cardinals.

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The last TD is probably the least problematic in terms of sheer failure. However, you can easily call the defense by our CB Roberts imperfect. Speaking of perfect, this throw and catch was something else.

Breaking it down was rather simple. It’s a designed man beater route combination with an out, corner route and a crossing route underneath out of a trips formation.

Jets blitz goes nowhere and it’s up to the defense. Roberts fails to get a jam on Floyd, but plays tight. He’s always going to be a step or two behind because of the lack of a jam up front.

Floyd makes his cut opening around a foot or two of space on the sideline.

The throw was perfect, the footwork to catch was unbelieveable and the Jets surrendered another TD.

Watching the film this week continues to show where the Jets are weakest. Henderson at this point should see a lot more bench, because he’s not had a good game in awhile and is a big liability. Gilchrist is more than likely one of the first cuts as he continues to take poor routes. And lastly do we have a decent corner on this team at all?