Sacks or Takes ?.. Jets Feel Strongly Both Ways ~ ~ ~

[kelly]

Team Has 10 Takeaways, but with Only 3 Takedowns of QBs, Defense Wants to Pick Up the Sack Pace

it's never a perfect world, and that goes for the Jets' gaudy takeaway statistics of the first two weeks.

While the defense took the ball away five times from Cleveland and five more times on Monday night in Indianapolis, the unit compiled only three sacks, with all of them coming in Quarter No. 4 against Johnny Manziel and the Browns."The guys up front, we want the sacks," LB Calvin Pace said after today's practice at the Atlantic Health Jets Training Center. "But nowadays, man, people get the ball out of their hands quick, so it's tough."

"As a D-lineman," added Leger Douzable, "you always want to get the sack."

But all the defenders we talked to acknowledge that while the sexy sack stats are off to a sluggish start (the three sacks are tied for 21st and the sack rate is 22nd in the NFL), the pressure on Manziel and Andrew Luck have made big contributions to the Green & White's league-leading 10 takeaways and plus-8 turnover margin.

 

Randy Lange @rlangejets

Marcus Gilchrist INT makes it 10 TAs. Jets set franchise mark for most TAs in 1st 2 games of season, breaking record 9 set in 1969 season.

 

"It was a situation," said Pace, "where the first week we were playing against two guys that were scrambling a little bit. Then Andrew Luck, we got some good pressure, we just weren't able to record any sacks. But the turnovers have kind of picked up the slack for us there."

"We'll take turnovers all day," Douzable said, "because the percentages show when you're plus-3 in the turnover category, you have a 95 percent chance to win the game. So we'll take those odds every day."The defense had a hand — several hands, in fact — in nine of the 10 takes so far, with the 10th coming on Brandon Marshall's Game 1 stripping of S Tashaun Gipson. The 10 takeaways, as we noted Monday night, set the franchise mark for the most in the first two games of a season.

Next up: The franchise record for most takeaways in the first three games is 13, set by the 1984 Jets. The most TAs in any three-game span is 16, done several times, most "recently" by the 1968 Super Bowl team.The Jets' best turnover margin for the first three games? They're already there at plus-8 with the 2004 team, so a zero margin against the Eagles on Sunday will give them a piece of that mark and a plus-1 will put them on top. For any three-game span, plus-11 has been done several times, last in 1978.But Pace points out that offenses are now on guard against the Jets and will be even more cautious than usual about protecting the ball. And head coach Todd Bowles said this week: "I’ve been on defenses where we’ve tried every game and you don’t get them and then I’ve been on teams where they come in bunches. The last two weeks they’ve come in bunches for us so we’ve been fortunate and hopefully we can keep that up."

Sacks are also a bunchy stat but they're usually a more bountiful crop than takeaways."At the end of the day, man, as long as we're winning, that's all that matters," said Pace, adding about sacks (one of which he almost had in forcing Luck into an intentional grounding), "They're going to come. With the coverage behind us, it's giving us a better chance to get them."

"It's a long season," LB Quinton Coples counseled. "We've got plenty of time, and we're going to continue to play hard. Sacks will come as the season progresses."

>   http://www.newyorkjets.com/news/article-randylangefb/Sacks-or-Takes-Jets-Feel-Strongly-Both-Ways/4a1198af-b6e4-4844-9bdc-13cb4325f3c9

[slgrayson1]

Pressures and hits are way more important than sacks and the Jet defense has been up near the top in that category so far. Watch how miserable they made poor Luck last week in Indy