Actually unless I'm gravely mistaken Leonhard was our strong safety for most of the season. Of course i've been wrong before.
I'm going to just focus on this one portion tonight. It's not that i'm unhappy with the blitz, but if the blitz is the ONLY way you can generate pressure then you find yourself blitzing more than you would like which puts extraordinary pressure on your secondary, in particular your corners, but also your other cover men as well. I'm a big fan of blitzes, but I also realize that you cannot blitz all of the time and that a blitz should only add to the pass pressure of a play, not be the sole cause of pass pressure on a play. Last season if we didnt' blitz we got little or no pressure on QB's, and for a team that blitzed ALOT. Infact we ranked 16th in the league in sacks despite blitzing more than I believe any other team in the league. We were near the bottom in forced fumbles and middle of the pack in interceptions. Simple fact is even with the blitz we weren't getting to QB's enough and we weren't forcing mistakes enough, these latter two things are what blitzes are largely designed for. Add a real passrusher to the equation and our blitzes become MUCH more effective.
I wouldn't call it a reward for past performance. What the front office did is kind of a further extreme, speculating on future performance. Jones has done very little to suggest that he can't continue to be an extremely productive runner, but the front office took the position that they don't think he can. Granted he was less than effective in the playoffs, but this is after being the closest thing to a solo workhorse back the league saw last year. There's a reason every team in the NFL uses multiple backs, and why the Jets planned on doing the same thing until Washington busted his leg open. It's completely predictable that with that kind of pounding over the length of a season, a guy will be worn down by January (Jones had the second most carries in the regular season behind 24 year old Chris Johnson). I agree that you can't just pay a guy out of loyalty and based on past performance, but I think you take it too far when you tell a guy who's giving you everything you're asking for, a guy who's extremely productive, that based on completely extraneous factors, you're cutting him because you don't think he can do it again next year. The standard line for these situations was always "what have you done for me lately." Thomas Jones has lately been setting career and conference highs in rushing. The Jets are instead asking "what, based on league trends, and independent of factors specific to you, would an impartial observer expect you to do in the near future?" I think it has to be frustrating as hell to lose your job based on that kind of an assessment.
Agreed, from the player perspective, it has to suck. Guy put his heart and soul in, and we threw him out because we had younger, cheaper alternatives. That said, you always want to go a year early than a year late, and Jones has shown signs of slowing down.
This is an excellent point that I had not thought about in much depth. I knew that we would have to depend much more on our secondary, but i thought that was the point.... we were going to bolster our secondary this year with the big pieces already in place. What i hadn't realized were the stats about forced fumbles and making the QB commit errors. Excellent point and well taken.......
Anther reason for the lack of QB mistakes, is for the most part, on 3rd and 6+ they knew we were coming, and not with just 4-5, but with 6-7 so they knew the ball had to be gone in under 2 seconds if they wanted to live. This is great for causing incompletions, but if we want more game changing plays, ala sacks and TO, QB's need to be lulled into a false sense of security thinking they have more time pre-snap than they actuall will once the play starts. With a real pass rusher who can generate pressure all the time, QB's can see 7 guys as possibly blitzers, but we might only send 5, but the question is where? so blocking schemes could be set to over protect from one side... while the full rush is coming from the other Also if the QB sees only 5 coming, his internal clock might be 4 seconds, instead of 2, which allows us more time to get there. Hell if we blitz only 5 most of the game, then in a big spot we can send 7, and the OL will be less likely to pick it up because they havent been trying to stop it all game. Adding a premier pass rusher is the biggest need for our defense to take the next step into the extreme elite.
