Barton was our best defensive player in 2004, he's ben nothing more than average in the 3-4. ferguson hasn't done much since leaving the Jets. Playing alongside Robertson, Ellis and Abe made him alot of money in '05. ferg at one time was really good but those days are long gone(and isn't he out for the year?). We haven't been looking for 4-3 DTs the last couple of years or else we would have been able to find one. It would have been easier to find a DT to play next to Robertson than to try to bring in a new crop to play the 3-4 especially when our best players played their best in the 4-3.
While you love to bring that up you also have to remember that first off we had a weak schedule that year and needed a Buffalo chokejob to even get in the playoffs in the 1st place so the gap between us from playing that game and playing golf at that time wasn't that big either. You are completely forgetting that 2005 did happen, while the injuries on offense was bad and did effect how we tried to build this team. The way we were gashed over and over again in run defense, that wasn't the offense's fault, our defense was that bad and we were a hell of a lot further away than just needing a DT to being good
We won the games we needed to win, Buf couldn't beat Pitt backups at home we nearly beat them twice on the road. We deserved to be there and if Chad doesn't get hurt we win 11-12 games. 2005 was an injury year, the talent was still there but we were beat up. Ellis and Robertson were playing hurt all year, Barton missed 90% of the season, others were banged up as well. '05 was all about injuries, if healthy we were still a top team. This year is especially frustrating b/c we are healthy and still stink.
Injury year is a lame excuse for you to cling onto the 2004 season, and what I am saying is the gap you love to bring up with Pittsburgh well the gap to playing cards wasn't big either and doing it off of a weak schedule much like last year has distorted our talent level when it comes to fans. Even in 2004, we weren't in New England's level and we weren't even close, the difference between that and now is that New England has created a gap with the entire league now. There is a reason why the great teams almost never suffer injuries, because their talent can avoid a lot of the injuries that bad teams usually go into, we sucked in 2005 for a reason and to say it was just injuries is being too damn naive.
And a year after that, they won the Super Bowl with essentially the same roster. They shit the bed in that divisional game, and they were not as good as their 15-1 record would have you believe, but their OL and defense was, and is, still far superior to the Jets'. My point wasn't that Pittsburgh is awesome, it's that Tomlin doesn't have to completely rebuild his defense like Mangini does. I don't see how we need to replace 4-5 players. Our needs on defense: 1. NT 2. Pass-Rushing OLB Fill those two, and the defense is immeasurably better. When that's squared away, we go for: 3. Run-Stuffing ILB (I'm assuming Vilma is gone after this season) 4. #2 CB (Dyson is good, but is probably not the long-term answer) So...to be a good defense, we need 2 players. To be a great defense, we need 4. How is that different from the 4-3? The only guys who would truly benefit from a change to the 4-3 are DRob and Vilma. And we'd STILL need to find a NT, pass-rushing DE, and at least one LB (Hobson and Barton are JAGs at this point, regardless of system). So...you want to switch back to an old system that only benefits 2 players? And we'd still need to pick up a few new ones? How is that any better than the 3-4?
It simply is not true that the Jets had most of the talent for a big time D at the start of 2006 training camp.
Great post. We completely agree here, I think I mentioned the same about 100 times in the intelligent Jet talk thread. ( Feel free to post there, your input is very good) 100% agree here as well. See my above reply.
No Argument on Barton in 04 but Barton was hurt in 05 and stunk when he played, he has never been close to the player he was in 04 regardless of the D. Nice point about Abe, he was a nice 4/3 player that doesn't exist anymore either. By the way 04 when Drob made Ferg look good, Ferg made Drob look good. DRob hasn't come close to being the player he was in 04 in either the 3/4 or the 4/3. He usually has a little run of good games at the end of the year but he has never put together a solid outstanding season. The Pittsburgh game which you like to bring up we were pushed all over the field. The only thing that made that a close game was a rookie QB who had a complete melt down in his first real pressure game.
I was talking about after the '05 season, we have had to go out and get a bunch of 3-4 players instead of building on a top 5 D by just trying to acquire another DT. At this point though even w/ the players we have we are terrible on D so the D rebuilding(which we didn't need in the first place) will take at least 3 years.
It's not? In 2004 we had a big time D, we were top 5 and they nearly carried us to an AFC Title Game. In '06 we still had Ellis, robertson, Barton, hobson, vilma, Barrett, Coleman. The big difference in the D that was great in the playoffs and '06 was we didn't have ferguson but at the other corner we had Dyson for Abe which is a wash and at the other safety we had rhodes instead of tongue which is a huge upgrade. We had the pieces in place. Barton hasn't played in the 4-3 since 2004, he played hurt early in '05 then missed the bulk of the season. maybe he's not the same player but he hasn't been in that same system so we don't know. Robertson played really well for us last year considering he was playing out of position and yes he and Ferg helped each other out but dewayne played great in 2004 and he was the anchor to that DL. Bettis wore us down late but our D played well in that game. Well enough to win it.
Dwayne played great for the last 8 games in 04 and he came on at the end of 05 and the end of 06. He has never been a consistent force for a complete season ever in his career.
The 2004 defense was not as good as the final stats imply. Like 2006 the schedule was the product of the offseason before and the Jets got to play teams like Arizona, Cleveland, Houson, San Francisco and of course Miami and Buffalo 2x each. You get 8 games like that on your schedule against teams with poor to weak offenses and it's worth maybe 10 slots in the final defensive standings.
This may sound strange....but the Steelers were the 3rd best team in the NFL the year the won it all. 1 Colts 2 Patriots 3 Steelers 4 Broncos 5 Seahawks I know...I know...they beat the Colts.......but that game was a fluke. Timl;in desreves major props as the Steelers are right back in the hunt again.
The sched only has 2 games based on the previous year's record, our sched's in '04 and '06 had very little to do w/ our poor records in '03 and '05. Buffalo was 9-7 in 2004, SD was 12-4, we played Ne twice obviously, we played pitt and Seattle. our '04 sched was I believe the toughest of any playoff team in 2004 and our D played very well in the playoffs where the teams are pretty good, right?
The good offensive teams that we played that year scored pretty much at will. San Diego got 28, Cincinnati got 24, New England got 23 and St Louis got 32. We did hold Pittsburgh to 17, Seattle to 14 and New England to 13 in other games against good scoring teams. In the playoffs we gave up 408 yards of offense to San Diego and got lucky that they took 9 penalties for 75 yards and Brees threw a key pick. Roethlisberger just sucked gopher balls against us all year, two of his big offgames of the season came against the Jets and even with him misfiring all over the place the Steelers scored 37 points against us in those games. The 2004 defense was decent, but it really was a middle of the pack defense not a top 5 one.
We were beating SD 27-7 late in the 3rd, they scored a few garbage time points, we were up 31-17 late on Cincy and they tacked on a TD. 23 points against NE isn't alot and in the first meeting we held them to 13 points(the ONLY team that year to hold NE under 20 points and we did it at NE), SL was the only team to consistently beat up our D all year. We held Sd on the road to 17 pts and if not for a boneheaded penalty we hold them to 10. SD AVERAGED 33 points a game at home in 2004, they didn't score under 20 points all year and didn't lose a home game to anyone other than the Jets. 37 points in 2 games on the road against a 15-1 team isn't bad. Pitt averaged 26 PPg at home in the other 8 home games that year and only 19 against the Jets. Our D was a legit top 5 that season.
Our D that season had the same problems that we are facing now, no pass rush. Our run D was good that year but no matter what you think of Ferguson losing him hurt our defense big time, led to a weak run defense ever since and we never were able to adequately replaced Ferguson. Now when it comes to today, Ellis is no where as good as he used to be, and Drob is waaay too inconsistant to be what we need him to be, and the other people is at best decent backup players. Final conclusion is that our defensive problem is not a scheme issue, instead we are just this bad, especially since we don't stick to just one scheme anyway. Tomlin was able to blend his system with LeBeau's because he was able to have the talent to do it. Our defense was already on the decline when Mangini got his hands on it so whether it was sticking with what we already had or switching, it won't matter since we will already have to bring in new talent anyway. Part of the problem that we are facing now was that we had to spend the '06 draft to rebuild the other line. We still have too many holes on this team.
Losing ferg did hurt us but we would have gotten over tha by now had we stayed w/ the 4-3 and found another Dt through the draft or FA. We all wanted to keep freg but let's be honest he always played his best in contract years and he did get a deal that was a little too much from Dallas. Maybe our pass rush wasn't like 1981 but we had 37 sacks in 2004 while we are on pace for 16 ths year so you can't compare the 2 pass rushes and the sack is an important stat but pressure is bigger and we aren't getting any pressure like we did in '04. Elis and Robertson are playing in a system not built for teir strengths, both were and would be alot better in a 4-3. We have enough talent to at worsst be middle of the pack defensively. There is not an excuse why we are ths awful on D w/ the talent we have and w/o major injuries.
