Three Position Groups the Jets Must Improve In 2022

This former Jets scout breaks down the ways New York needs to improve if they hope to win any games this season.

Teams always are attempting to improve.

In the words of Hall of Fame Coach Bill Parcells, “You don’t get any medal for trying to do something, you get medals for results.”

Even the team who wins the Super Bowl is trying to get better in order to attempt to repeat.

What are the three areas the Jets need to improve on for the upcoming season if have any hope of being competitive?

Offensive Line

The glamour positions get all the press on offense. We hear about the quarterback, the running backs, tight ends and especially the wide receivers.

However, make no mistake, none of that matters if the Jets do not show dramatic improvement from the five guys up front.

The offensive line has been the Achilles’ heel of the Jets and one of the positions team General Manager Joe Douglas has not paid enough attention to. Douglas has only spent 4/25 picks on the offensive line in his three drafts during his tenure. While he has dropped cash in free agency on George Fant, Laken Tomlinson and Connor McGovern, there is nothing to write home about on the depth chart.

READ: Ex-Jets Scout Grades GM Joe Douglas

The Jets offensive line surrendered the fourth most sacks in the NFL last season (53 sacks). To put that into perspective, the last time New York had given up that many sacks in a season was back in 2007.

New York’s passing game ranked No. 20 and their rushing attack ranked No. 25.

The offense overall ranked No. 26.

These numbers are not remotely getting it done. 

Defensive Line

In today’s pass happy NFL, if a team can’t generate a pass rush, as they like to say in New York…

Fuggedaboutit!

The 2021 Jets’ pass rush ranked the lowest they have ranked in the past three years (No. 26) while producing only 33 sacks on the season.

Part of this falls on the defensive line and part of it falls in the ability for the linebackers and secondary to create sacks when they are sent on blitzes.

However, the defensive linemen just did not get to the passer enough.

Honorable mentions go out to Quinnen Williams (6 sacks) and John Franklin-Myers (6 sacks), but outside of that nobody deserves any ink.

It gets worse when talking about the run defense.

Since 2019 when Douglas took over, the run defense has gotten increasingly worse.

Last season, it fell off of a statistical cliff.

In 2021, the Jets run defense plummeted down to No. 29 in the NFL.

No team can win when opposing running backs are seeing more green turf in front of them, than arms reaching for their legs.

To Douglas’ credit, he was active this off-season with acquisitions attempting to correct these disturbing trends.

Now it comes down to if he was right or wrong about his evaluations.

Time will tell.

Linebackers

This group shared in the dismal pass rush and run defense rankings.

However, two players in particular did a lot more than anyone else on the defense when it came to run defense.

Linebackers C.J. Mosley and Quincy Williams get more than an honorable mention.

Moseley logged 168 tackles (103 solo) and Williams had 110 tackles (73 solo).

These two were tackling machines and if it wasn’t for them, the run defense ranking would have been worse.

The main issue is the Jets got next to no pass rush out of any of their linebackers (5 sacks total).

New York has got to find a way to schematically get their linebackers into the pocket since Douglas didn’t feel the need to upgrade the position in free agency or the draft.

Bottom line

For as much as the game has evolved over the decades, at the same time, it really hasn’t.

It still comes down to the war that is waged along the line of scrimmage.

That hasn’t changed, and it probably never will.

New York’s season will come down to their ability to show improvement in the trenches. 

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