sure, three of the four teams got here by running the ball last week, but how did they make it to last week to begin with? throwing the ball. nobody would claim team's should abandon the run simply because it is a passing league, but to claim the fact that they ran the ball last week is indicative of the style of football that is required to win from game 1 through the playoffs isn't accurate.
I agree with this assessment. A healthy balance of both run and pass should be what it takes. The Niners are a prime example of this, they can beat you with both the run and pass.
The playoffs showed you can be one dimensional to make it, but need to get a balanced effort to win in it. That's always been the case, it was just made much clearer this weekend because of the wind/rain basically forcing teams to the ground.
lol actually im a sanchez homer, not smith's. i didnt say smith was better than kaep or wilson, i had said if kaep or wilson were on the jets they wouldnt be any better. kaep is throwing to boldin, crabtree, davis wilson is throwing to tate miller n baldwin all 6 of those are better options that geno didnt have aside from kerley and playing with different set of receivers. my apologies on the running game
We all get our opinions around here, but now that Kaepernick's season is over, what if Idzik calls his counterpart in SF and offers a straight up trade, Smith for Kaepernick, what do you think the response is? This is not a Saturday Night Live skit - they're not that funny any more.
But I agree with you, it's just silly. Kaep gets at least 2 more wins out of the 2013 Jets, Wilson at least 3. The "no talent around him" excuse is just a red herring. _
I expect QB play to be a much bigger factor this weekend. Also don't forget that the Seahawks and Pats played in adverse throwing conditions, which heavily influenced their gameplans. On top of that Seattle lost Harvin to a concussion in the first half and seemed to have the game under enough control by halftime to go really conservative in the 2nd half. When they lost to the Falcons in this round last year, their gameplan was nothing like this past weekend and they had Wilson throwing it all over the place (and successfully). We all know Brady is capable of it too and the threat of the Pats passing attack is probably making life easier for Blount. When it boils down to it, Peyton and Brady are all-time greats and Kaep and Wilson look like they could be perennial Pro-Bowlers for many years. I am not surprised that these are the 4 QBs left standing even if this past weekend wasn't a banner day for throwing the ball.
Tells me that having a great defense is more important than having a great offense. Tells me that having an average offense is more than enough to win when you have a great defense. Tells me the old adage still holds true, runing the football and playing defense wins championships. Tells me that Rex's vision of emulating the seahawks and 49ers in building the jets is right.
Ah the riddle of all riddles. Unfortunately this riddle has no answer. I would guess that Wilson as a rookie or Kaep as 2nd year were slightly ahead of Geno Smith and may have elevated the team a little bit (+1 extra win possibly, in 2012 forget it). It wouldn't have been a huge difference, however, because the Jets oline isn't close to either of those teams, and we don't have a running back the caliber of Frank Gore or Lynch, and we also don't have nearly as good a passing defense or WR cores. Talent makes a difference. You can't win games with 1 player. We know Geno turned the ball over quite a bit, but what we don't know is how much of that was simply bad throws, how much of it was the receiver being out of position, poor pass protection (was terrible this year), dropped passes, confusion getting on the same page with players learning a new system, deflected passes, bad footwork, trouble reading heavy pressure, trouble going through targets, good coverage etc. The list goes on and on. Honestly, the last 2 years on the Jets, I firmly believe you could insert almost any QB in the league (aside from the elites, Manning, Rodgers, Brady, Brees) and they would have put up weak numbers. Holmes has been banged up, and Stephen Hill has been non existent. In 2012, forget it, we had no receiving core aside from Kerley. The oline even took a step back although the pass protection was pretty bad both years. Both Wilson and Kaepernick have loads more talent around them, and have one thing in common: They have strong arms with receivers that can make those big deep plays. It's no surprise they are both top 10 YPA QBs. The Jets severely lack this deep game so either QB would have struggled. Heck, look at Kaepernick with a semi depleted WR core only completed 58% netting just 3,700 yards this year (including rush yrds), with a very good line, and a great RB core. His TD to INT ratio is very good. He's good but he's not great. On the Jets he'd probably look almost the same as Geno. The big difference, however, is that Geno got thrown to the wolves before he was ready. Kaepernick in his actual rookie year would have probably looked worse. Geno can easily reach CK's level or surpass it. Wilson is better than both, but he is surrounded by great talent on both sides of the ball. On the Jets, they would both suck, but Wilson gets us 1 extra win in 2012, and 1 tie instead of a loss this year. CK does worse. Sorry the no talent thing is not an excuse or red herring, it's a simple fact. Those teams are both superior to us in almost all aspects. It's a poor comparison, the situations are night and day. Saying that Geno will never be as good as them after one year in the NFL is beyond ridiculous, however. This is where the argument falls off a cliff because CK didn't even play his rookie year. I'm going to save this one for the archives. I know it's just your opinion and all, but it's way too early to make any sort of judgement on that.
When you subtract out the rushing yards gained by QBs the Jets ended up with a little less total rushing yards in 2013 than they did in 2012. Smith's rushing yards made the total look bigger and is the difference between being 12th in rushing 2012 and 6th in 2013. In regards to Smith's TO's being self inflicted. Yes most of them were with a few exceptions like the 1st one against Tennesee which was all on Hill and couple other ones that appeared to be receiver error. Almost all of them were bad decisions not understanding the coverage not bad throws. I am not sure which is worse. The positive I can say about his TO's is over the last 12 games almost all of his TO's almost occurred with the Jets down by a large margin of 10+ points. I believe there were only 4 of his TO's the last 12 games that came with the Jets down by less than 10 points during those games. The NE INT, one down by 9 against Carolina, a fumble when down by 3 against Baltimore and the Miami INT at the end of the half down by 3. That to me is a big positive as almost all QBs get lots of TOs when they play from far behind. Notice every single TO but one came with us losing and all but 4 came with us quite far behind and him pressing to get us back into the game. The first 4 games were different in that a lot of his TO's were made in close games. It appears he learned over the last 12 games limiting his TO's mainly to when we were playing from far behind and he needed to take a risk and get us back in the game. Also keep in mind that the 1st 4 games he threw a lot more risky type passes throwing deep a lot more than he did the last 12 games. Part of that was likely MM reiging in the passing game to limit TO's except when we needed to catch up.
Not close, bad decisions are much worse than bad throws. If the football IQ doesn't skyrocket this year, the bad decisions continue. The guy can make some beautiful throws, it's the bad decision after bad decision I'm not sure he has the ability to fix. He doesn't seem like a guy with a high football IQ. JMHO. _
You didn't write the tome, that was dead serious. Yeah, Wilson and Kaep were only "slightly" better than Geno. _
If by chance Idzik DOES surround Geno with talent and Geno explodes onto the NFL stage with 35 TDs to 4 INTs, the #1 thread on TGG will be: "Any QB with that much talent around him would do good. Geno still sucks. We still need to find a better QB".
