This myth that we have a top defense

[Jets Voice of Reason]

The team has quit and underperformed in meaningful and winnable games far too often. Largely boils down to the coaching staff and lack of accountability/discipline overall. 

The defense is good enough to be a defense for a sb team, which seems to be conflated with a defense that propels a team to win the super bowl. They literally had to not just be a league worst offense for the last two years to be a playoff contender and they can’t manage that. 

Also, while you can’t totally control what players say or feel, you can realign expectations. DJ reed’s bears defense comparison put a huge target on their back that was totally not needed. Now they just look like assholes. 

 

[Matt39]

25 minutes ago, Jack Straw said:

Imagine how good this defense would be if they were actually being coached. Saleh and Co. run junior varsity concepts and rely on great athletes to execute. They're not tricking anyone, which at least partially explains why they're allergic to turnovers.

Any coach in the league can get this to be a top 10 defense. Only the absence of a great coach is preventing them from being a top 3 unit.

Yeah there’s no reason to believe that this defense can stack up against Miami next year. It was a gigantic mismatch. 

[jamesr]

1 hour ago, Jack Straw said:

Imagine how good this defense would be if they were actually being coached. Saleh and Co. run junior varsity concepts and rely on great athletes to execute. They're not tricking anyone, which at least partially explains why they're allergic to turnovers.

Any coach in the league can get this to be a top 10 defense. Only the absence of a great coach is preventing them from being a top 3 unit.

Jets have 25 takeaways this year ... joint third in the league, and only two behind league leading Cleveland.

https://www.espn.co.uk/nfl/stats/team/_/view/turnovers/table/miscellaneous/sort/totalTakeaways/dir/desc

Trouble is we have 32 giveaways which is second in the league ... three behind league leading Cleveland. Differential of -7 is therefore one of the worst in the league (-10 by both KC and Washington). 

[redlichtie]

Imagine how apocalyptically bad this team would be if the D wasn’t as good as it is, and I agree with @Beerfish that while it’s good, it ain’t anywhere near elite, that said, it’s hard to fault them too much as they’ve had their finger in the dam for years trying to hold back the tide while the offense lays egg after egg …they deserve some benefit of the doubt….

there are some absolute wastes of space in that unit though, led by the Braxton Berrios of defense; John Franklin Myers….you could replace that guy with @T0mShane and not see any noticeable drop off in production. The most spectacularly overrated player we’ve had in years 

[Aussie Jet]

I think it's a little simplistic to say that the defence has quit. End of the day, these people are professionals being paid to do a job, and they're looking to get their next contract. Quitting on a team because the offence stinks doesn't look good when their agents are talking to other teams about their next contract.

Cleveland found the soft underbelly in our defence and exploited it, even without Amari Cooper. Mosley moves like he's 50 years old, but Saleh and Ulbrich keep him in the middle of the defence, so it's unsurprising that Flacco targeted Njoku early and often when the game was up for grabs.

I think it's more accurate to say that the defence is less than a sum of its parts, because some of the players on the defence are no longer productive and they need to be hidden by the coaches. Unfortunately, in this game and in this day and age, it's too hard to hide the weak elements in a defence.