Wednesday Film Review

Taking a look at some key plays from Sunday’s defeat to the Miami Dolphins.

🗽 Good morning Jets fans. It’s Wednesday which means it’s time to look into the film from the weekend. It also means that it’s Thanksgiving tomorrow which means football and food, who doesn’t like football and food?

Before we get into the newsletter I just want to say thank you to all those who have already subscribed, the newsletter gets a lot of reads through the day, so if you’ve not made the plunge to subscribe yet, hit that button:

📰 News & Notes 📝

• Connor Hughes confirmed that Zach Wilson will be starting for the Jets on Sunday after fully recovering from his PCL sprain.

• Josh Johnson will act as backup to Wilson with Mike White having tested positive for COVID and Joe Flacco being deemed a close contact. Both have been put on the reserve list.

• The Jets worked out 4 kickers before deciding to sign Alex Kessman. Kessman was a UDFA signed by the Chargers out of Pitt. He only has a 72.6% FG success rate in college and while his leg is strong, he can be wayward.

• The Jets also announced that they had released LB Corey Thompson from the practice squad.

Let’s get into some film 🎥

Laurent Duverny-Tardif 🩺

He may sound like a 16th century Italian Renaissance painter, but if you pay attention to the grading by PFF you’d think he was more paint by numbers than a historical masterpiece.

On a Monday morning, I tend to have a quick flick through the PFF grades, more for interest than anything else. I skim, I share and unless something really sticks out, I’ll move on. Let’s just say that something stuck out.

PFF gave LDT a pass-blocking rating of 17.1. Just think about how bad you’d need to be to be given a 17.1. That to me is allowing pressure on every other play, hit after hit, sack after sack. They did rate him as the best run blocker on the line, which is hard to disagree with as he was outstanding on the ground all day, doing things like this and opening holes on the regular.

But was his pass-blocking as bad as PFF said it was? No, that’s the simple answer. There was one series in the 4th quarter where he and Morgan Moses weren’t on the same page (remember this is LDT’s first start in a couple of years and he played next to two different tackles at points in the game). Here’s one of the plays which he almost certainly would have been marked down for. It’s an issue we’ve seen across all the lineman this year, and that’s a slowness to pick up a stunt. Teams are starting to use this regularly against the Jets, and until you show you can stop it, teams are going to continue to use this against the Jets.

But, outside of a couple of plays, his pass-protection tape was boring, and that is one of the highest compliments you can give an offensive lineman. During the game, I just didn’t hear LDT’s name called very much, so I dived into the film and what I saw was a guard who completed their job to a good standard.

He showed that when he was asked to pull and block he could do that. Good movement off the snap to locate the player, and knocks him back. The play is going away from LDT but it doesn’t matter.

He showed that he could stand players up. As a blocker, if your QB has room to step into his throw then you’ve done your job. He stands up DE Christian Wilkins here and doesn’t give him an inch, Wilkins tries the chop but LDT is locked on. 🔒

Want some more? Let’s carry on. LDT gets off well, gets hands-on the initial rusher, and then is prepared for the stunt. The lineman drops into coverage and then I think that’s safety Brandon Jones coming on the slightly delayed blitz and LDT sends him flying out of the throwing lane.

There are so many of these plays where he doesn’t do anything earth-shattering, but he also doesn’t make any mistakes, which makes you wonder how PFF got to a 17.1 grade. I’m not saying send him to the Pro Bowl, but come on PFF, up your game.

You expect him to win this one, but the quick shuffle to get into a good base guarantees it.

And one final one just because I like the head on the swivel and a need to hit someone. McGovern has this covered but LDT just wanted to let him know he was there.

I think that’ll do for LDT. But, considering he hasn’t played in two years, that was a very good first impression. If you need some more plays to prove why PFF were completely wrong on their evaluation, just flick on the tape.

Elijah Moore

I love Elijah Moore, you love Elijah Moore, Saleh loves Elijah Moore, we all love Elijah Moore. Is that an accurate summary of how things have gone so far?

Moore missed considerable time in the pre-season, he worked through some early-season struggles with the offense just not clicking and he’s had 4 QB’s throwing him the football. Yet he continues to get better and better, culminating in his 8 catch, 141 yards, and 1 TD performance against Miami on Sunday.

Let’s take a look at some of those plays.

Let’s start with the big play. The 62-yard touchdown, a stunning play from absolutely every single angle.

There is a lot to like about this play. The Dolphins are in their cover-0 look, they drop out of these to try and confuse Flacco, but he recognizes it straight away, he knows where his best match-up is and that’s Moore on Byron Jones, and then Moore’s move at the top of his roue gains the inside leverage, and Flacco delivers an absolute dime.

But it’s only when you see it from another angle that you see how good the move is.

I mean if you don’t find that beautiful, I don’t know what to tell you.

I’ll just out another here, which was the 23-yard reception at the bottom of the screen. This is a really simple route, but the speed that Moore eats up the cushion has Howard off balance. Moore angles inside which forces Howard to reach out and get flagged, Moore has excellent body control to get his feet inbounds for the big completion. Love it.

Here’s the big play from Michael Carter and if you like good blocking, well this for you. It’s like a fine wine, it gets better with every sip (view).

I had to watch this 7-8 times to appreciate how everyone does their job. LDT stops that inside rush, Connor McGovern, AVT and George Fant create the lane with perfect seals and it’s topped off with Keenan Cole blocking downfield. It’s a perfect run by Michael Carter who shows patience and then explosion 💥

I love this play. I actually thought he’d got in, but they marked him down at the one.

Breakdown

It can’t all be rainbows 🌈 and butterflies 🦋 - after all we did walk away with a loss. So I wanted to touch on a couple of the big negative plays on Sunday and see if we can figure out what went wrong.

First of all, let’s start with the 56-yard strike to Mack Hollins. Robert Saleh in his post-game interview said this came down to “poor eye discipline” - but he wouldn’t elaborate on who he was talking about.

Chances are he’s talking about Isaiah Dunn, who’s to the very bottom of the screen. It seems as though safety Elijah Riley is coming down to play that flat zone where the Dolphins wideout is and Dunn is supposed to be playing that deep zone, but Dunn get’s bated into coming up so you end up with two Jets defenders covering one Miami receiver, and Hollins streaking down uncovered. This wasn’t the first time Dunn was caught with his eyes in the backfield, you can find 4-5 examples of him losing his “eye discipline” - It cost the Jets Sunday, but he’s a UDFA and he’ll learn, the class was well and truly in session with the Dolphins.

Ashtyn Davis is back in that one deep safety look and Tua gets him to momentarily flip his hips to cover the receiver at the top, this allows Hollins just enough time to bring in an underthrown ball and take it in for the score. Poor execution by the Jets and I’m willing to bet that Saleh wasn’t too happy with that mix-up.

Remember Dunn was playing a bigger role due to the injury with Echols and Riley was starting his first game, so these things happen in those circumstances.

He was accounted for

Here is the sack on Flacco which resulted in the fumble and recovery by Miami. Coach Saleh said that the rusher should have been accounted for and Flacco expected him to be picked up. This is a hard one to piece together.

There are three rushers to the left. Brandon Jones comes off the edge for the sack and almost hides behind his lineman before. The left side looks a complete mess, AVT doesn’t pick up the stunt but then Jones is completely unblocked as well, Fant thinks he’s taking Brennan Scarlett before the OLB comes around on the inside rush. In the end Flacco gets flattened and at the end of the play both tackles are left blocking nobody. Answers on a postcard for you think was to blame there.

That will do it for today. Thanks for reading and if you like what you see, don’t forget to subscribe.