With No Preseason, the New York Jets Have to Create Their Own Competition and Intensity

No preseason games means that the New York Jets - and the rest of the NFL - need to create their own intensity in practice.

While the reasons behind canceling the four NFL preseason games may be for the right reasons, but the tolls they are taking on teams are becoming apparent. The New York Jets are attempting to have a scrimmage among themselves at MetLife Stadium but even that is a challenge to put together.

“We're gonna do some stuff, really the idea I had in mind originally for like our first type of, I don't know if it's really a scrimmage, but while we're trying to simulate the game, the game style, environmental situations and thing like that,” Jets head coach Adam Gase said this earlier this week during one of his virtual press conferences. “I'm pushing that back just because we had all these injuries and we had to stop for a second, figure out how do we get these guys back healthy? How do we make sure they are in the right kind of shape and headed in the right direction? So, we will push that back a little bit.”

The Jets have had injuries on both sides of the ball. Notable injuries are wide receiver Denzel Mims out with a hamstring and safety Brian Poole out with dehydration.

The Jets open the season September 13 in Buffalo against the AFC East favorite Bills. This weekend, the Jets would have already played two preseason games with their third originally scheduled for Friday, August 28 at home against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Instead, the Jets have had less than ten full practices, and only half of them with full pads on.

Challenging, for sure.

“We will have something to where we can go to the stadium and kind of test out that whole atmosphere out,” Gase said. “There is more than just on the field, the locker room, how are we using the press box, all that stuff, we have to go through all those procedures because it’s different than what it’s been in the past. We will get to a point where we are going to do that stuff and hopefully it is sooner than later. We have a date in pencil but who knows if that changes.”

The logistical challenges aside, the test for the Jets is to answer some tough questions about their identity and personnel. An offensive line that projects to feature four new starters would have benefited from some game time to come together. Defensively, the Jets are trying to see what they can do without the recently traded Jamal Adams and C.J. Mosley, who opted out of the season.

Ideally, the line would have had two or three games to get some snaps together. Defensively, it is hard to tell who can emerge as playmakers when pads let alone hitting are at a premium.

As hard as the coaching staff tries to create competition and game-like conditions, it simply is impossible.

“We’re always going to try to create it, I don’t think you really have to try too hard when you have Gregg (Williams) designing the defense on the other side that’s creating enough pressure for our guys offensively I know that, and then I think just with the guys that we have, we got a lot of veteran players that are coming from different teams that have been with winning programs, like these guys practice the right way,” Gase said.

“I mean when I watch some guys more out there it’s good competition, it’s physical, you can tell these guys are really going at it and working the right way. To me, the biggest thing is we got to create the situations for them to when we hit gameday, we’re not having to think how should we have handled this, we don’t want to be answering those questions after the game, we want to make sure that we hit all the stuff before we get to that first game.”

The Jets took Friday off but are planning to practice both days this weekend.


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