Expectations for AVT

Edition #169

Good Morning!

Welcome to a new week of TJW. I’m off to sunny Spain next week so there won’t be any TJWs unless I decide to pre-write some posts to bore you with my five favorite Jets of all time

Today we’re talking about all things Alijah Vera Tucker.

QUOTE - Tyler Conklin was speaking to the official Jets website this weekend: "I'm really excited [about playing with Wilson]. I love his arm talent, his arm angles, and the way he can throw. It's a catchable ball. He's got a quick release and is super athletic. He's also a mobile quarterback who is able to get out of the pocket to make big plays. The whole locker room is awesome. Coming from Minnesota, we were a little older team. Here nearly everyone is young. We have fun at practice. And the whole tight ends room is great. C.J. is a great guy, always happy and positive. I look forward to playing with him side by side."

Bleacher Report named the Jets as one of the 5 NFL franchises that could make a Bengals: “Like the Lions and the Jaguars, the New York Jets are a rebuilding team. Like the Bengals in 2021, though, New York could go from rebuilding to contending in one season. With their offseason moves, the Jets should be significantly better than the four-win team we saw last year. They added three premium free agents in guard Laken Tomlinson and tight ends C.J. Uzomah and Tyler Conklin, and then they nailed the early portions of the draft”

New Orleans defensive end Cameron Jordan was recently giving an interview and it’s safe to say that he wasn’t overly complimentary about the Jets last season: “Because I watched my team destroy the Jets. The Jets ! I’m not lying. You watch film on the Jets and you’re like, (Jordan leans into the Zoom camera and whispers) they suck . Against the Jets!, That was one of those teams that you’re like, ‘they’re not only giving out wins, they’re giving out stats for everybody ’.” That was following the Jets 30-9 loss to the Saints in week 14.

As the Jets enter the 2022 season, they’ll be asking second-year guard Aliah Vera-Tucker to switch positions from left guard to right guard, moving positions is nothing new to the former USC man. AVT started his Trojan career at right guard in 2018, before moving to left guard in 2019 and left tackle in 2020…after moving to left tackle in 2021 with the Jets, 2022 will mark the 5th straight year that AVT has been asked to play a new position.

But what can we expect from him in year two? He has a year in the system, he has a year having learned the protection calls, having played next to Connor McGovern, and having gotten used to the speed of the NFL. Before we get into AVT’s game I just wanted to take a quick comparison check with some other guards who have recently come into the league.

I wanted to take a look at a couple of recent examples of offensive guards and how they improved through their second season in the league. I looked at all guards who were drafted in 2020 and then filtered out anyone who moved from tackle to guard like Austin Jackson in Miami, and I limited the comparison to players who played at least 500 snaps in both seasons. I don’t think it makes sense to look at a guy who maybe played 100 snaps as a rookie and then became a starter in year two, especially when you consider that AVT played through his entire rookie season.

I just wanted to see if the general trend suggested that offensive guards improved from year one to year two, and as you can see with the four examples above, most players made a jump. Damien Lewis in Seattle is the main outlier and his run blocking fell off a cliff in year two. It may have something to do with the Seahawks hiring a new offensive coordinator in Shane Waldron in 2021 and him implementing his own system, Waldron had previously been the Pass game coordinator in LA with the Rams

Vera-Tuckers’ rookie season was a success, but it was far from being a home run. Let’s have a look at his overall ranking in terms of some key categories, all of these are based on players who played at least 500 snaps for their team in 2021:

PFF Overall Grade: 66.8 (36/71)
PFF Run-Block Grade: 72.5 (16/71)
PFF Pass-Block Grade: 56.9 (43/71)
Sacks Allowed: 2 (16/71)
Pressures Allowed: 42 (65/71)
Pass-Blocking Efficiency: 96.6 (48/71)
Penalties: 5 (38/71)
Zone Run Blocking Grade: 70.0
Gap Run Blocking Grade: 63.7

If you watched the Jets last year then the stats above won’t come as a surprise. AVT slotted straight in as a good run blocker with flashes of being a great run blocker, but his pass protection was below average. 42 pressures allowed is far too many and as a first-round pick, you want to see that number closer to 20 than 40. The good news is that he flashed that pass-protection ability at points last year, he had 5 games where he allowed either 1 or 0 pressures and a further three games where he allowed just 2. If you can get 8 games on the slate where your pressures allowed are 2 or under, you obviously have the pass-blocking ability. You also don’t play left tackle for a program like USC unless you can pass-protect, that just doesn’t happen.

He also never allowed a sack when playing guard at USC, he had nearly 1000 snaps between left guard and right guard and he allowed 0 sacks and only 7 total pressures…elite numbers by anyone’s standard. You probably wouldn’t believe that coming into the league he was regarded as a better pass blocker than run blocker, here are his PFF grades for the three years in college, with 2020 being at the top.

The problem last year is that like most rookies, he had some stinkers. In week one against Carolina he allowed 6 pressures, in week 8 against the Bengals he allowed 5, and in week 13 against the Eagles, he allowed 6. Those three games accounted for over 40% of his total pressures allowed, if he can just eradicate those rough games and change them to mediocre 3-pressure games, it would go a long way.

One thing that I noticed last year is that a lot of the issues stemmed from miscommunications, and that’s not completely surprising. On at least two occasions the line went one way and AVT went the other, which caused a huge lane in the A-gap which resulted in instant pressure. A lot of people pointed the finger at Connor McGovern, but if you re-watched the action it was clear that it was AVT who got it wrong. Now that could be down to CMG’s communication or just one of those things you see with rookies, we’ll never know but it’s likely we’ll see less of this in 2022 considering it’s his 2nd year in the league and 2nd year within the same system with the same calls.

I’m not even slightly concerned about his run-blocking, my expectation is that he’s a top 10 guard in the league in regards to run-blocking in 2022. Add in the fact that he’s likely going to play next to Mekhi Becton then you have yourself a dominant right-side for running the football. The concern is the pass-protection on the right, AVT will make a jump but it’ll need to be a sizeable one. For as good as Becton was as a rookie, we need to remember that he did allow 7 sacks and his run blocking was far ahead of his pass protection.

I don’t expect AVT to get to the level of someone like Joe Thuney in year two (17 pressures allowed in 2021), but if he could get to an Andrew Norwell-type level (24 pressures allowed in 2021) I think that would be a huge building block to go with his dominant run game. There are certain elements of this that are out of his control, Zach will hopefully make quicker decisions in 2021 and although GVR caught some heat for saying Wilson held onto the ball too long (you don’t say that about your rookie QB Greg), there was an element of truth to it. Wilson’s average time to throw of 3.05 seconds was the 4th highest mark among QBs who took at least 300 dropbacks.