The Improved Secondary
Edition #173
Good morning!
Happy Friday to one and all, one more Friday closer to football season. I’m heading off to Spain tomorrow, but never fear…there will be some pre-written TJW content landing in your inboxes next week.
Rookies will arrive for training camp in just 11 days with the veterans joining them on the 26th. We’re that close to having something tangible to talk about, let the camp battles commence…I’m just practicing.
ESPN released their latest top 10 rankings, this time it’s the turn of the linebackers. Shockingly, after surveying 50 leave executives, coaches and players…no Jet made the list. C.J Mosley did get an honorable mention though - “Mosley played just two total games in the 2019 and 2020 seasons, but he put up 168 tackles and two sacks last season. "Still really solid, always strong and smooth, never been a twitchy athlete," an NFC exec said. "Hasn't declined as much but on is on that trajectory."
Brad Spielberger of PFF released an article listing the best off-season moves for all AFC teams. I imagine he had a few to choose from for the Jets, but decided that the decision to sign both Tyler Conklin and C.J. Uzomah warranted the tag of best off-season move saying: “Uzomah and Conklin are complete players at the tight end spot, capable of adequate blocking in offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur’s wide zone run scheme, while also contributing as big-bodied safety valves for quarterback Zach Wilson on third downs and in the red zone.”
I don’t tend to spend a huge amount of time responding to comments made by talking heads on ESPN. They’re paid to get clicks, most of them are former players who have some pre-existing bias, Chris Canty ticks all those boxes. He works for ESPN and he’s a former Giant who’s never had much time for the Jets.
I will say that if it wasn’t for Paul I’d miss most of what’s said about the Jets, so I’m eternally grateful for the sound clips he tweets out consistently.
“Even though they picked Sauce Gardner 4th overall, I’m still worried about their secondary. They did add Jordan Whitehead and LaMarcus Joyner, I think those are solid veterans, but I think they’re still a little thin at the cornerback spot, so we’ll have to wait and see with that”
So, should we be worried about our secondary?
If you check the statistics from 2021 then you’d probably be slightly concerned. The Jets allowed 259.4 yards per game through the air (29th). They allowed 68.31% completion through the air (30th) and 7.5 yards per pass attempt (29th). They allowed on average 13.8 passing first downs per game (31st) and an opponent average team passer rating of 103.2 (31st). I mean the statistics don’t paint the best picture.
I wouldn’t be so fast to press the panic button, I’m certainly not as concerned about the secondary as I am the linebackers, there is a good chance that the Jets line up with four new starters in the secondary next season, it was a priority to fix this season and that’s exactly what the Jets have done.
There is one key aspect missing from Canty’s evaluation. D.J Reed.
For some reason that continues to baffle me, analysts seem to conveniently forget that the Jets signed Reed this off-season, and he’ll be partnering Sauce with our two starters from 2021 playing complementary backup roles.
So why is the signing of Reed so important? Because it drastically improved our secondary, which is the topic in question here.
Based on all corners who had at least 200 coverage snaps last season, D.J. Reed graded out as the 18th best corner in football. His 51.5% completion percentage allowed was the 8th best mark in football, while his 114 yards allowed after the catch puts him as the 20th best. All of these rankings are based on 116 qualifying corners, so ranking inside the top 20 is some accomplishment. He allowed 2 touchdowns all season but also brought down 2 interceptions with 6 passes broken up.
He was also rated as the 11th best zone corner in football last season with a coverage grade of 79.1, both of his interceptions came in zone coverage and although the Jets play a mixture of zone and man schemes, they are a heavy zone team on early downs, which plays right into Reeds skill set.
As much as I like Hall and as much as I think he still has a huge part to play in this Jets re-build, you’d be hard-pressed to argue that Reed is not an upgrade…he’s certainly an upgrade on Brandin Echols who he’s likely replacing…and that’s because of a certain someone else the Jets brought into the fold this off-season.
So we’ve established that the Jets have a top 20 corner on one side of the field, they have some Sauce on the other side.
Let’s just remind ourselves of some of the key stats when it comes to Sauce Gardner:
Sauce didn’t allow more than 20 yards in any game he played in 2021.
Over his 3-year career at Cincinnati, he didn’t allow a single TD
In single coverage this year, he allowed 5 receptions on 20 targets with 2 INT
31.5 - That’s the passer rating when throwing at Sauce in press coverage since 2019
Didn’t allow a single red-zone catch on 68 coverage snaps in 2020/2021 combined
For his entire three-year career he allowed 1 catch on 115 red-zone coverage snaps.
You can never really project someone to the next level before they play a single snap in the NFL but it’s extremely rare for someone to dominate to that extent at the college level and not be at least a good NFL player…but then again, nobody has really dominated like Sauce did, even Revis didn’t lock down at that kind of rate at Pittsburgh and that’s saying something. But Sauce is less Revis and more Antonio Cromartie…with the potential to be better.
Some people questioned the drafting of Sauce because of his dominance in man coverage, but as coach Saleh alluded to over the course of the off-season, a lot of games are decided on 3rd down, and in most cases, you’re likely going to be in man coverage on third down. The Jets allowed opponents to complete 44.39% of third-down opportunities last season which was ranked 27th in the league, Sauce will go a long way to bringing that number down.
It’s also probably why Saleh was so excited to get Sauce. SAUUUUUCCCEEEE!
Last season the Jets had 11 safeties take snaps for them…11. Here’s a full list of all the guys who appeared for the Jets at the safety position:
Jason Pinnock, Sheldrick Redwine, Ashtyn Davis, Elijah Riley, Kai Nacua, Adrian Colbert, Marcus Maye, Sharrod Neasman, Jarrod Wilson, Will Parks, and LaMarcus Joyner.
Is it any wonder that we struggled last season? Of all those players only one player scored a coverage grade of 70 or more and that was Will Parks who appeared in just 91 snaps for the Jets in 2021. That kind of instability on the back end of the defense doesn’t work and let’s be honest, the Jets were just really unfortunate with injuries.
This year the Jets signed Jordan Whitehead to be their starting strong safety. Whitehead has played in 59 games in the last four years, and you know what they say about the best ability is availability, but his abilities go far beyond that.
Using 400 snaps as the minimum for this assessment, Jordan Whitehead was the #16 best safety in football year, the #8 best safety against the run, and the #28 safety against the pass. Now that 28 may not look great, but this is based on 82 qualifying safeties, so if 41 is average then Whitehead is well above average in the area most consider him to be weakest.
I will accept that there are legitimate concerns around the free safety position with Ashtyn Davis, LaMarcus Joyner, and Jason Pinnock battling it out for the starting role. But even with the weakest position in the secondary, there is reason for optimism, and that optimism starts with LaMarcus Joyner, even if it does take a little bit of a leap of faith.
We all know that Joyner suffered an injury in week one that caused him to miss the entire season, obviously not how the Jets had drawn it up, but whenever Joyner has played safety, he’s been successful. For some unknown reason only known to Oakland, they signed a good safety and turned him into a poor slot cornerback.
The last time Joyner played safety he was rated as the 23rd best safety in football (minimum 400 snaps) and the 4th best tackling safety…which is key for a Jets team who seemed to whiff on countless tackle attempts. Go back a year further and Joyner was rated as the 2nd best safety in all of football with a PFF grade of 91.0, he trailed only Harrison Smith.
It would be unreasonable to expect him to return to the kind of performances we saw back in 2017, but it’s not unreasonable to expect him to be a top 25 safety next season if he can stay healthy. If he can’t then you’re relying on a jump from Ashtyn Davis or betting on the potential of Jason Pinnock. A lot of people talk about Pinnock as a strong safety and I understand that, but his three highest-graded games in 2021 came against Buffalo, Jacksonville, and Tampa Bay, and the one consistent there was he played the majority of his snaps at free safety.
There’s also one aspect of our ability to play coverage that has nothing to do with our secondary, and that’s our ability to rush the passer. The team design last year was to have Carl Lawson rushing the passer and forcing them to throw early with Joyner and Maye taking advantage deep, that didn’t happen as all three suffered significant injuries.
The more pressure you put on the QB the less time they have to find their targets, it’s simple and logical, but it’s something that people seem to forget in relation to the Jets. New York managed 33 sacks last season, which was bottom 10 in the league. The Jets had a 5.32% sack percentage of the opposing QBs, again a number that’s bottom 10 in the league.
The expectation is that with the return of Carl Lawson and the additions of Jacob Martin and Jermaine Johnson, the Jets’ sack percentage catapults above 7% which would put them in the top 10 in the league. That will absolutely play a huge role in the Jets improving their coverage stats. Let’s not forget that Lawson had the 4th most pressures in the league from an edge back in 2020 (64) and his 20% win percentage was also a top 10 number, I mean that is a significant upgrade in itself.
We also have two backup corners in Bryce Hall and Brandin Echols who got nearly 2000 snaps of experience combined last year, with Hall’s 14 pass breakups ranking him 2nd in the league, our slot corner Michael Carter II gave up a single touchdown all season.
It’s easy to look at the statistics and instantly point at the Jets’ secondary as a weakness, but that would be ignoring improvements and context, something we don’t do here at TJW.
Have a great weekend!
That’s fine. I get that. But we finally have a good guy covering our Jets so for me calling him lazy is not good. He puts a a lot of thought and work in his posts.
Canty, O'Hara, Diehl and both Simms are afraid of criticizing the Giants and making Mara mad. Why is it that all the ex Jets who are part of the national media play it down the middle in criticizing their old team but ex Giants won't. In the last 5 years the Giants have the worst record, the worst GM and three head coaches but not until it became painfully obvious that it was over for them did they say anything negative about the HC's. And they all still believe, or say, that Jones can be a top QB and it was the front offices fault. Chris Simms wasn't even a Giant but he's apologetic talking Giants with Florio. Its pathetic. O'Hara is the worst because he's on the NFL Network daily. Lies through his teeth. And I won't even discuss the Giants post game show on MSG with Howard Cross. Its like a high school broadcasts. Sometimes after a loss there close to tears.