Jets Film Review: Overcommitment Means Doom

Sometimes commitment is a good thing: see Lee, D. vs the Lions. Sometimes, though, you get carried away: see Lee. D against Miami. On Sunday three plays doomed the Jets, three miscues, including two overcommitments and one case of Buster Skrine.

Lets’ dive in.

---

There’s a fine line between trying to blow a play up and getting blown up. Darron Lee found himself on the wrong end of that bargain.

The Dolphins run a simple zone right play. This is the classic blocking scheme where the play goes right, but the back has the freedom to choose his own hole.

The Jets played this straight up. They’d have to win a one on one for this play to get disrupted.

Lee shoots hard left but overcommits to the left side and gives up his hole. Drake sees the hole opening up between Lee and the outside man. To be fair to Lee, he’s not the worst looking guy on this play, the nose tackle completely turns his shoulders.

Both men get washed out, Copeland, the outside man stalemates and actually gets beaten by the OT to the inside.

A crease is formed and...see you later. Miami’s got the lead.

---

The next TD is Buster Skrine continuing to be an enigma. He’ll have a game or two every year where he’ll play out of his mind, but in between we get stinkers like this one.

It’s really simple, the Dolphins run a three man pattern out of trips right with an underneath crossing route, a deep corner route and some type of WR arrow route on the outside.

Skrine gives his man plenty of room to make a move. The deep safety (for obvious reasons) favors the right side of the field and has eyes for the one deep route which is the corner route.

Once Skrine is beaten to the outside, it’s game over. Skrine is the only defender on that side of the field with the safety committing to the deep route. He shares little to no responsibility for anything that happened underneath.

Skrine simply got beaten in a match up he had to win.

---

Nania’s article touched on this play (and the Skrine TD) but I wanted to show how the linebacker and safety overcommitted and allowed the touchdown.

The Dolphins had five men in the pattern including the wheel route out of the backfield, a deep fly route on the outside, a deeper out route with a crossing route underneath. The one that ended up scoring was a simple TE go/skinny post (sorry should be in red but it’s the deep one across the middle).

The keys are Middleton and Williamson. The Jets are playing what looks like a cover two although it reminds me a bit of Tampa-2 defense with the middle linebacker dropping deep into the hole between the safeties.

Middleton favors the deep sideline route figuring he has help in the middle. Williamson drops back but zeroes in on the deep in route (top of image) and forgets the opposite side of the field.

By the time he reacts to the route, the TE is by him with his body facing the completely opposite direction of where the catch was made (purple line below).

Middleton is also late on the route, and with no pass rush whatsoever it’s an easy TD. Both men were caught looking for something else and ended up out of position when the throw was made.

---

One last note: call it a bold prediction or just going with what I’ve seen, but the Jets will give up a long but very quick score before halftime. In both games so far, the opponent has scored in the drive right before the half despite the odds being against them.

Week One, the Lions got the ball back with 1:55 left in the first half and drove 72 yards before settling for a field goal. On that 12 play drive, they had four plays of 10+ yards, and the Jets gave them two penalties for first down. The Lions didn’t have a third down until they got to the three yard line, which shows you the Jets gave up big play after big play. The drive chart is not pretty.

Against Miami, it was more of the same. With 2:29 left in the half Miami drove 62 yards in under two minutes for the TD. The drive took ten plays, two 3rd down conversions (one because of a defensive penalty) and two plays over ten yards.

If the Jets are going to beat the Patriots or any other good team this year, this is a trend that must end.