Reasons to be optimistic?
SpiritOf68 · 2007-11-19
Re: Reasons to be optimistic?
Post-game: again, this is my point.. what happened to the Steelers that were supposed to blow us out? What happened to 300 yards on the ground? Poof!
jake · 2007-11-20
Re: Reasons to be optimistic?
SpiritOf68 · 2007-11-21
Re: Reasons to be optimistic?
Previously Jake wrote:
Not only that... but what happened to us being any good? I mean, we win and the media just talks about hod bad the Steelers played not how well the Jets played.I did hear positive mention of the sack total, but yeah, the Giants got most of the coverage here at least.
Jake
SpiritOf68 · 2007-11-18
Reasons to be optimistic?
It sounds crazy, but I do think that in the midst of this disaster of a season, there are reasons to be optimistic about the Jets franchise in general.
1) Underestimated. True, the only thing that matters at the end of the day is "the W", but I actually think this team has more talent (gasp!) than is acknowledged. Seemingly every week I encounter my fellow fans walking with heads hung low, telling me that we will be blown out this week. The truth is, though, that we have only gotten blown out once: against the team that has done it nearly every week (The Pats). Let's look at the results for the rest of the season:
Week 2 @ Baltimore. Loss by 7.
Week 3 vs. Miami. Win by 3.
Week 4 @ Buffalo. Loss by 3.
Week 5 @ Giants. Loss by 11.
Week 6 vs. Philly. Loss by 7.
Week 7 @ Cincinnati. Loss by 7.
Week 8 vs. Buffalo. Loss by 10.
Week 9 vs. Washington. Loss by 3 (overtime).
The rest of the results can be summed up this way:
Wins: One (1)
Losses by 7 or less: Five (5)
Losses by 11 or less: Two (2)
Losses by 12 or more: Zero (0).
So, why is it that we keep talking about a team that is going to get obliterated every week, but has not lost a single game by two touchdowns since week 1, against a team that has done that to everyone? How many of these seven losses were we in until the 4th quarter? Baltimore, that's one. Buffalo in week 4, that's two. Philly, that's three. Cincinnati, that's four. Buffalo, that's five. Washington, that's six. Even against the Giants, our biggest loss besides the Pats, we were still in that game in the 4th, that's seven. So, in seven of our eight losses, we were in the game in the 4th. It is stunning to think this: our record could almost as easily be 8-1. At the very least, 5-4. Now I have no clue as to why we could have won this game, we don't seem to have a running game or a passing game or a run defense or a pass defense.. and yet, we were in all of these games. We must be missing something.
2) Draft. Due to the above, we will get a better draft pick than we deserve.
3) Our rookies. It's only been a couple games, but Harris is just a monster out there. Devastating. Revis seems adequate so far, but he's the best CB we've got quite frankly, and he has played admirably in his rookie year against some of the best WRs in the NFL. This is the first year that I remember being completely satisfied with our draft picks. Let's be honest, usually they are lame.
4) Quarterback situation.
No Penny. Let's just be glad we've put this issue behind us and can move forward. Even the only valuable things about having Chad behind center all backfired this season: throwing picks in clutch situations, making just plain dumb throws.. especially ones that got out WRs leveled.
In my opinion, Clemens has been solid behind center. We have to take into account that he's a rookie, working with a terrible O-line, a running game on life-support, Shotty's god-awful playbook and he even played one of his three games without Laverneus. Just the fact that he CAN throw the deep ball improves us immediately, even if Shotty is too dumb to call that kind of gutsy play.
5) Next season, we'll either do the right thing and DROP THE 3-4, or we'll do the wrong thing but pick up some major pieces we're going to need for it.