I'm happy to see an optimistic article from the media about the Jets, but I am not a KC Joyner fan. To me, he frequently takes surprising stances (with an appropriately inflammatory headline) just to draw attention, and then cherry picks stats to best skew things to his point. This article, for example, is now on the front page of ESPN's NFL page called "Why the Jets can Make the Super Bowl" - he knows the Jets sell right now. By the way, I'm not against statistics, just against the way he tries to use them outside of context.
Really? Coming from the guy who expects the team that hasn't won in over a decade to make the playoffs because of 1 player signed. Bills D is average and their O is just as bad if not worse than last year. Only reason you won 6 games last year is because of a ridiculous amount of turnovers early in the year. But this guy is the crazy one.
You've been probably the one that corresponds with my posts the most since I've been here. Is it really possible that after all that, you STILL don't get what I'm trying to say? Here are my opinions. I'll lay them out for you: 1.) What I expect this year: I do not think the Bills are a great football team. I do not think the Bills will win the division. I expect the Bills to fall somewhere between 7-9 and 10-6 and they should be in the hunt for the wild card. NOTICE: the Bills have a brutal schedule the first 9 weeks of the year, with the easier games coming on the back end. Therefore, I expect the Bills record in the first half of the season to be bad (and all you Jets fans saying "this is the same old Bills") and then for them to really turn it on down the stretch. 2.) The reason I think the Bills are better is not because of 1 player. I have said this time and time again, that this has been a 3 year rebuilding process to get to this point. Over that 3 year period they've complied key draft picks, key free agents, and for the first time since I can remember are entering the season healthy.
I think that it is pretty unintelligent to assume that (A) the defense will be mediocre and (B) that the offense cannot score. (A) The defense has talent and depth at every position including safety going from two slow white men to two faster more athletic black men, who can actually run. Also, adding Coples, and Ellis in the D-Line rotation should significantly help the defense from last year. Now this offense can average 14 points a game, because quite frankly a team without a qb could score 14 points a game.
stop basing our offense on a preseason where we NEVER bhad our regular players in together at any time.
The Jets are just like the 49ers and Ravens, the Super Bowl match-up that should have happened last year. The problem with being like them, and we were the 49ers before they were the 49ers, is that you can't have any mental mistakes. Kyle Williams and Billy Cundiff had mental mistakes. You have to play near perfect football. Can we? Let's hope so. A team like the Jets, Ravens or 49ers has lost the Conference Championship(s) every year since 2008. Sooner or later, something's gotta give.
Joyner is firmly in the Bill James camp of sabermetrics. He tends to be pretty accurate in the things he says, although like James he is much better at explaining why something happened than predicting what will happen.
The other take on this would be that strong defensive teams that are average or below on offense are capped in the playoffs. We haven't had a truly great defense win the Super Bowl since 2002, a decade ago. We've had a fair number of strong defenses matched with good offenses win over that span. The 2005 Bears allowed 12.6 pts a game and were beaten in the first round of the playoffs. The 2006 Ravens allowed 12.6 pts a game and were beaten in the first round of the playoffs. The only teams to average under 14 pts a game allowed and win a playoff game in the last decade are the Bucs, who had an all time great defense and the 2008 Steelers who also had Ben Roethlisberger at QB. Defense is not over-rated but it's ability to win championships certainly is.
The Giants D's weren't great reg season D's but they were great postseason D's that carried them to 2 SB titles. I was listening to sirius NFL radio this morning and Amani toomer was on. A caller mentioned how he should thank Eli for the SB he won and he said he thanks Strahan, Tuck and the DL b/c they carried that team. The O was better last postseason but the D still did most of the heavy lifting.
This has nothing to do with my point though. If you look at where really good defenses not attached to good offenses tend to die it is before the Super Bowl.
Wasn't the defense top 5 last year? The fact that we had a sup par year and still ended up top 5 speaks volumes. I'm tired of the Jets being written off in every single article printed. It's nice to finally see a positive spin on them. With the easy schedule its not that unrealistic for the Jets to have another post season run this year. To me, the D looks better than top 5 this year. The offense will come around.
it does speak volumes, and not positively. it shows that if the offense sucks that even a top 5 defense isn't enough to be a winning team. that is the only interpretation that can be taken from that fact that is absent of any speculation. what exactly is positive about that fact?
Yes, I understand that. However, what I was referring to were articles like this: (from thejetsblog with analysis that I mostly agree with) http://thejetsblog.com/main-page/fjm-style-kc-joyner-on-revis/ The above is an article from after Revis' ridiculous 2009 season, where Joyner disputed that Revis was a valuable player. Which, is probably something you agree with. My problem was with the fact that he took certain statistics, specifically the YPA for the other Jets CBs, and then drew only a single conclusion, without entertaining other ones. Joyner's conclusion was that it was all Ryan's scheme that allowed Jets CBs to be successful. To me, that year in particular, the scheme was to funnel the ball as much as possible to Revis' side, and give as much help to the Jets other CBs. I think that that is at least as reasonable, if not more reasonable, to conclude than Ryan's scheme alone could make any CB look that good. For me to have believed his argument, he would have to show data with Revis off the field, that the other Jets CBs held up just as well. Obviously this dataset is lacking, but I don't think you can draw his conclusion without it.
It speaks volumes for the defense. People were saying the Jets defense was mediocre last year and will be worse this year. I just don't see how. That's the one part of the team I'm really excited for this year. Yes, it will all boil down to Sanchez this year. We will go as far as he takes us. But the stronger the D is, the less he has to do, so it balances out.
The D was top 5 in yds allowed, 20th in points allowed. It was nowhere near a top d in this league last year. if it was we easily make the playoffs. The D was medocre last year but I expect it to be a top D this year.
