The Jets know the word is out on their secondary — it can be beat with the deep ball.
So, until they start stopping the deep pass, the Jets know teams are going to continue trying to throw the ball over their heads.
The Jets have given up five passes of 40 or more yards in their first two games, tied with the Raiders for the most in the NFL. The Jets have given up three touchdowns on passes that traveled 40 yards in the air. The rest of the league combined has given up two, according to ESPN Stats & Info.
“It’s a copycat league,” Jets coach Todd Bowles said this week. “Until you put out the fires, you’re going to keep seeing them.”
While cornerback Darrelle Revis has drawn the majority of the criticism, he was only really responsible for one of the long bombs — the 84-yard touchdown by the Bills’ Marquise Goodwin. Three of the plays have been the result of busted coverage, something the Jets have worked on “ad nauseum” this week in practice, according to Bowles.
“I don’t know if they are communication breakdowns more than just mental breakdowns,” Bowles said. “The deep ball is something we’re harping on in practice every day and we’ve got to stop after two weeks, and we’re going to see it until we fix it. So we’re just trying to get it fixed.”
The Jets face the Chiefs on Sunday in Kansas City. Quarterback Alex Smith is not known for his deep ball, but surely the Chiefs will test the Jets’ secondary at some point with wide receiver Jeremy Maclin or speedy rookie Tyreek Hill. The Chiefs have completed one pass of 40 or more yards in their first two games.
“We see them as more of a vertical threat, in our opinion, they do take the ball down the field quite a bit,” Jets defensive coordinator Kacy Rodgers said. “They take shots, they’re explosive, they have an excellent screen game, so we see them as more explosive than say some other people.”
While the mental errors drive the coaches crazy, some of the players view them as not as big of a concern as if they were physically getting beat by the wide receivers.
“Busted coverages, you definitely don’t want to do that because the mental side of the game you should always have right,” cornerback Buster Skrine said, “but knowing it’s just a busted coverage it’s not like, ‘All right, we can’t play with these teams because of our talent.’ It’s something we can fix.”
The struggles of the Jets’ secondary is surprising because all five of the key players — Revis, Skrine, cornerback Marcus Williams and safeties Calvin Pryor and Marcus Gilchrist — were together last season when communication was not a problem.
“I don’t know if you call it surprised, you’re disappointed in it and you try to correct as much as you can,” Bowles said. “You don’t want that to happen. You try to coach it to not to happen. We’ve just got to make sure we’re getting better.”
Bowles played safety in the NFL, so this is especially troublesome to him and has led to him riding those players a little more this week.
“I think that’s why he’s on us so hard,” Pryor said, “because he once played safety, and whenever the ball is going over the safety’s head — last line of defense — good things are never going to happen. We have to make sure as safeties we’ve got to take care of that.”
Pryor’s strategy for getting through the week has been to stay as far away from Bowles as possible.
“It messes with him,” Pryor said of the long plays. “I’m not going to get close to him to find out.”