Not many positives in 2nd half grades for 4-12 Jets.
posted by Jeremy on January 15th, 2008
A disappointing 4-12 season has concluded and the time has come to dish out the grades for the 2nd half of the season. A 3-5 record in the 2nd half was certainly better than the 1-7 of the 1st half, but the grades haven’t changed as much.
Offense – D While there were a couple of positives, Thomas Jones finished 10th in the league in rushing yards and Jerricho Cotchery finished in the top 20 in both receptions and receiving yards. The negatives on both of those players is that Jones only found the end zone once the entire season on the ground and of Cotchery’s 80+ receptions, only two made it to the house.
The quarterback position is still a question mark as Kellen Clemens took the helm after Pennington was benched. Clemens wasn’t able to showcase the big arm Pennington continued to be ridiculed for not having because the Jets top 2 receivers ( Coles and Cotchery ) only were on the field together for two plays during the 2nd half of the season. This allowed teams to load up the box to stop Jones and pound lumps on Clemens to the tune of 22 sacks after he became the starter and he only played two plays before being hurt in the New England game and didn’t see action due to injury against Tennessee.
Pennington was Pennington-esque while filling in for the injured Clemens and now after talks of Chad being traded or even released during the offseason because of his 4.8 million dollar cap number Tannenbaum has said he feels Chad will be back with a
chance of being the starter because neither he nor Mangini are 100% sold on Clemens just yet.
The biggest disappointment was by far the offensive line. It was just that, offensive. Pete Kendall being traded during training camp didn’t seem to be a big issue at the time, but it may have been the biggest difference between the 4-12 record and an outside shot at a return trip to the playoffs. No one was able to fill the void he left and the rest of the line underachieved. The line was outplayed week in and week out. Their inconsistency was the sole reason for the rotation Mangini put in the play the final two games of the season.
Defense - B This is where the biggest change occurred, a unit that was
oversized, overmatch, and simply pushed around the first half of the season became a cohesive unit that continually put pressure on the opposition and kept the Jets, with the Dallas game being the exception, in every game during the 2nd half of the season.
While skeptics talked about the Jets needing to change out of 3-4 style, Mangini made them believers again. Jonathon Vilma’s season ending injury very well will be looked at as a positive as David Harris emerged as a leader of the defense. Harris finished 8th in the league in tackles with 127, 112 of which were in the nine games he started after Vilma went down. Others think Vilma is expendable with Harris in the mix, but I think Vilma could complement and even make Harris better and bolster the linebacking core and help a still undersized defensive line.
Darrelle Revis, outstanding, superb, all-pro, shutdown corner, could be how he’s described in the coming years and he is a big reason for the 180 pulled by the defense down the stretch. He faced every teams #1 wideout week after week and suffered through a lot of growing pains early on in the season. Very few, if any corners in the league can say they kept Randy Moss out of the end zone and gave up a meaningless TD to TO in the same season, but Revis did.
Speaking of keeping Patriots out of the end zone, the Jets were the only team to keep Tom Brady out of the end zone during his record breaking season where he threw 50 touchdowns. Very impressive, but ever since the Steelers game when the defense sacked Big Ben six times after coming into the game with only nine we’ve come to expect surprising results from this defense. While Mangini deserves some credit for stepping in the turn the defense around, he should have stepped in earlier.
Special Teams - C The special teams were just that. Leon Washington became a threat to return every kickoff or punt return to the house. Some began comparing him to the Bears Devin Hester. As with Harris replacing Vilma due to injury, Washington surprised everyone replacing Justin Miller after he went down. Washington helped the Jets offense start many drives in good/great field position because teams kept kicking away from him more and more as the season went on. Because of that, Leon didn’t have any kick returns to the house during the 2nd half of the season.
Mike Nugent put a couple of bad missed field goals during the first half of the season behind him. Other than a missed field goal against New England and a blocked extra point Nugent was money. The blocked extra point changed the game against Tennessee, forced the Jets to go for a touchdown to win late, rather than kicking a field goal to force OT. The miss against NE kept the Jets down two scores, but it was a game no one thought they should have been in to begin with anyway.
The punting game which seemed ok, took a odd turn the last two weeks of the season as Jeremy Kapinos got the start against the Titans. No real explanation given as to why Graham was benched, but it only lasted one week as Graham was back punting against the Chiefs in the season finale. Perhaps it was a tryout for Kapinos, who was in camp with the team during preseason, or just Magini simply letting Graham know no one’s job is safe. The offseason and 2008 training camp will answer that question.
So, as a whole the 2nd half wasn’t much better than the first. The defense and the return game are big positives, but an inconsistent offensive line is the big negative and the quarterback position is the big question mark. Let’s hope the issues on offensive are solved this offseason in case the expectations of the defense and return game aren’t fulfilled.
