During a season where a team underachieves it’s very difficult to find positives, but when the playoffs aren’t a possibility it’s what you need to do when looking towards the future. The Jets began the 2007 campaign against the Pats are the defense was carved up like a Christmas goose by Tom Brady all day. They tried to blitz, but he hit the hot read, they dropped eight into coverage but with six, seven, sometimes eight seconds to throw the ball eventually he found an open receiver. This luckily was the worst showing be the defense during the season, but it wasn’t a far cry from the norm. It was heightened when pro-bowl linebacker Jonathan Vilma went down in the Cincinnati game with a season ending knee injury.

The team only had seven sacks while Vilma was in leading the defense and almost all of those came when the defense blitzed. The D-line was just unable to get any sacks let alone pressure on the opposing quarterbacks. The Jets headed into the bye with only nine sacks in as many games, but things started to change after the bye week.

The D chocked up seven sacks against a Pittsburgh team should have rolled the Jets, but instead just rolled over and were beat in possibly the biggest upset of the season 19-16 in overtime at the Meadowlands. The line finally led the charge with Ellis and Robertson getting 4.5 sacks and the team racked up seven in all.

They followed that up with another three and did a really good job of putting pressure on Tony Romo for a little more than a half until they ran out of gas because the offense couldn’t stay on the field. Against Miami they got three more including a couple of forced fumbles which they recovered in a rout of the fish 40-13. This turnaround was a change in scheme, the pressure came from all over, not just blitzing corners and safeties. It’s been a total team effort by the defense.

David Harris continues to pile up tackles, but he isn’t alone. Mosley has started to find his way to the QB and Ellis has been found in the backfield consistently. Dewayne Robertson while still not living up to that #4 pick in the draft has been getting on the right side of the line also with 3.5 sacks in the last three games.

This defense certainly misses #51 roaming from sideline to sideline making big hits both filling gaps and stopping running backs and laying receivers out over the middle, but the front seven stepping up with the leader only a spectator is a good sign for 2008 and beyond if a top notch defensive end can be found to accompany a group that the numbers won’t show, but is playing solid defense as the 2007 season comes to a close.