Geno Smith held the Jets back last year, but this season he could be part of the solution.
The Jets head to Green Bay on Sunday afternoon with a chance to back up their season-opening 19-14 win against the Raiders and cement themselves as a legitimate playoff contender.
“What I see this year is a guy that is in complete command of what the offense is asking him to do,” CBS pregame analyst Boomer Esiason said of Smith, who completed 23-of-28 passes for 221 yards with one touchdown to go along with two turnovers last week.
“I know that he made a couple of mistakes, but he is running more, he looks more confident and I imagine his communication skills, after learning a foreign language last year, have come full circle,” Esiason said. “I like what I see, I truly do. Do I expect him to go to the Super Bowl? No. Do I expect him to be the MVP of the league? No. But I do expect him to have a really good season.”
And that might be enough considering Smith was the lowest-rated quarterback in the league last season and the team still went 8-8. The Jets’ strength, though, is up front, where they manhandled the Raiders on both sides of the ball, outgaining them 402-158 in total yards.
“They can make a legitimate playoff push because they have an offensive and defensive line combination that’s as good as there is in the NFL,” Esiason said. “There are very few teams that can say they have two sets of lines as good as the Jets have. And that can end up being the reason why they win. … And as the Giants have proved you don’t have to win 12 games to go on and win the Super Bowl.”
Despite the Week 1 dominance, the Jets were unable to put the Raiders away and are more than a touchdown underdogs against the Packers, who were pummeled in Seattle in their opener. Still, Aaron Rodgers and company are a significant step up from the Raiders and quarterback Derek Carr, who was making his first NFL start.
Esiason said he believes the best way for the Jets to neutralize the Packers’ offense is to keep it on the sidelines, something the Seahawks showed was possible.
“When they gave the ball to Marshawn Lynch he wasn’t touched for 3 or 4 yards past the line of scrimmage,” said Esiason, who quarterbacked the Jets from 1993-95.
“So if I am the Jets and I see that I’ve got a three-headed monster at running back [Chris Ivory, Chris Johnson and Bilal Powell] that looks pretty damn good, we should try and play a little bit of defense with our offense and give our defense a break by controlling the football. If I am looking at the film, I’d say I can run on these guys. And I’d imagine that’s where the Jets’ collective heads are at.”