By Tom Rock
Joe Kowalewski should have been crowing. Kerry Rhodes should have been wearing orange. Neither happened.
That’s because Kowalewski, a Syracuse guy, had avoided Rhodes all last week and had not made the traditional locker room wager when one guy’s college plays another, in this case Louisville. And as you know, even though ‘Cuse was a 30-something point underdog, they pulled out the victory.
Kowalewski said he had been burned so many times previously that he just didn’t think Syracuse would get it done against Louisville. Apparently Louisville felt the same way.
The Jets will have a drastically different approach and completely overhaul their mentality for this coming week. Yeah, right. Mangini, who is so even keel he’s often in drydock, said the approach stays the same. And the players seemed to be thinking the same thing. Nice to get the win, but there’s still work to be done.
Especially on defense, which is something we’ll get into in the next few days. Miami torched the Jets on screen plays, some of which were read and picked up and others which were wide open. It all comes back to creating a decent pass rush, though. If a team has to blitz to pressure a QB, then those 1-on-1 coverages out in the flats turn into big plays when a blocker shows up.
Had a chance to watch a few plays from the game again. Some random observations:
There was really no key block on the Leon Washington kickoff return, but Darian Barnes was the guy who stuck it to his former team with a nice hit at the point of attack … D’Brickashaw Ferguson was really strong in isolation against Jason Taylor (and as a side note, Brick seems to have gotten much bigger since training camp. I mentioned that to him today and he just smiled) … Adrian Clarke gave up the only sack of the game, allowing Vonnie Holliday to beat him cleanly and tackle Pennington. The only other real pressure on Chad came when Crowder was called for the roughing the passer penalty on an incomplete. On that play Brick did a nice job of sliding to the inside to cut off his blitz but he wound up pushing his toward Pennington. Thomas Jones also came up on the wrong side of Ferguson on that play; he could have helped … I was wondering about the decision not to call a timeout on third-and-12 and take a delay of game penalty in the third quarter. Mangini said today that he liked it because it saved timeouts and the percentages of converting third-and-12 are roughly the same as third-and-17. As it turns out, the Jets saved the timeout and beat the percentages, as Pennington hit Coles for a 23-yard gain to keep alive the drive that ended with Chad’s TD run.
By the way, Thomas Jones was the offensive player of the game, David Barrett was the defensive player of the game, and Leon Washington was special teams player of the game. Jason Trusnik, who portrayed Jason Taylor during the week, was the practice player of the week. Finally, after two losses, those green hoods will come off the primo parking spots out front as a reward for each honor. When the Jets lose, there are no players of the week, and no parking perks for anybody.