The Jets turned many heads when they used their first two Draft picks on safety this spring in the NFL Draft.
I think MMQB’s film guru Andy Benoit is one of the most insightful NFL writers around. He put together a Jets preview that explains why safety play is so important to the team.
Bowles understands that the more versatile you are at safety, the more versatile your scheme can be. Safeties create your disguised pressures and coverages. In Bowles’s matchup-zone scheme, the safeties must cover tight ends man-to-man and also be able to convert their zone coverage into man coverage against inside vertical routes. Given the athletic demands of all of this, it’s no surprise the Jets found their new safeties in the first round (Jamal Adams) and second round (Marcus Maye).
It is something that went a bit under the radar last year with all of the failures of big name players, but safety play hurt this team quite a bit. I am sure you can remember all of the busted coverages the Jets had.
Putting a pair of rookies deep has its own risks, and there likely will be some degree of growing pains. Having a pair of talented safeties can change a defense for the better, though.
This was just one of ten points the article made about the team so I encourage you to give it a look.