Is it my imagination or am I seeing an awful lot of mis-tackles this year? Our defense is playing lights out, but still, it seems like every game this year has had a good amount of tackles that should (and could) have been made by the first contacting defender, only to see the guy break it and move on. There was one game recently where the RB broke like 6 tackles on one play. Has anyone else noticed this? Doesn't it seem excessive this year for some reason? Also, the penalties. Every team gets them but Rex really needs to get a handle on eliminating them. Sunday's game wasn't too bad, but if we're going to take it to the next level, we've got to eliminate some of the stupid penalties. The yards really kill you.
Yeah, missed tackles has been up so far. Young players and the new rules on high tackling probably have something to do with the rise. High penalties is a result of real issues at LG for much of the season alongside young players in the secondary. There are other effects in play also but basically the Jets are a young team in a partial rebuilding mode and you get lots of flags in that situation as players who should not be on the field are there anyway.
I understand that and I'm not saying our DEF isn't doing a great job. And you can't tackle a guy like Gronk in the open with one guy... not happening, I understand that. And there's a lot of attempts at ball stripping b/c we're so agressive and I understand that too. But if there's one area that I think they could improve upon, it would be to make sure you wrap the guy up... go back to basics. And it's not something you even have to waste time practicing, You could address it in a meeting with game film. "Hey, come on guys... look at this. Can we just freaking get some surer tackles going? I know you know how to do it, it's just something you need to concentrate more on."
I might be misinterpreting the defense but I believe the Jets scheme revolves around sending missile attacks at specific pressure points against the offense with some masked protection from behind. Since the chaos is taking place practically every play, it isn't surprising when someone is out of position once in a while. I think it'd be a lot worse if guys were falling down or just sliding off players. To me it seems like part of the price of such an aggressive defense.
I think you're right. And maybe the Jets have already addressed this, because I didn't notice too much of it on Sunday. It was more noticable several weeks ago. But yeah, I'm certainly not advocating reducing the aggressiveness in order to make more first-contact tackles.
Tackling is something you have to practice in order to improve. You can't just tell someone to tackle better and expect better results.
I'm not sure repetition is the answer. These guys are in the NFL for a reason. They already know the basics and are all capable of good tackling or they never would have been drafted. It's a matter of showing them on film how ridiculous some of the plays looked and maybe you embarrass them (to a certain extent) into not letting it happen so often. I don't think it's so serious yet that it requires wasting time on special drills. Besides, it may have already been addressed. The Pats game looked better than previous games.
That is far too simplistic an answer. Most of are penalty problems have come from young players. We were offside or in a neutral zone infraction 4 times against the pats. That is a symptom of our young defensive line being a bit unfocused or over aggressive. 12 men on the feild is on the staff due to miscommunication but partly on the players involved as well. In the Rex Ryan ear we have been amount the least penalized teams often. It's not like the staff had a major shakeup, but the roster did. We went from an older less skilled vet team to a younger set of guys almost everywhere. Problems will come from that.
