Florham Park, N.J. — Perhaps Aaron Glenn and Todd Bowles forced their teams to commingle on Tuesday night for a joint yoga session. While the idea doesn’t exactly fit the two head coaches’ personalities, it’s at least within the realm of possibility, given what transpired that morning.
The New York Jets and Tampa Bay Buccaneers rocked one another, early and often. It began with a meeting between David Bailey and Luke Goedeke after a 1v1 pass-rush drill rep, and it highlighted a Jets helmet being flung 30 feet in the air in hammer-throw fashion.
A day later, peace and love were strangely in the air as practice began.
Until it wasn’t. Whoops. We’re not in Woodstock anymore.
Yet again, the Jets and Bucs scuffled. Only this time, the number of occasions couldn’t match Tuesday’s output, and, interestingly, it only occurred on the field that featured the Jets offense and Bucs defense.
From a Jets perspective, it isn’t the worst thing in the world. Considering some of the fights are happening because some of the newest Jets players are sparking things, that internal fire — certain guys deciding they won’t stand for nonsense — is a positive.
Cutting through the few scuffles were actual football takeaways, one of which is a monster positive for the team wearing green and white.
Defensive run fits: Stock up
For the first time since the infant state of training camp, the New York Jets’ gap integrity and run-fit spacing looked impressive. More interesting is that Glenn’s defensive run structure looked tremendous just a day after looking as porous as possible.
The Jets have deployed a very different defensive front in the last week than in the first. While both looks were expected this season, it’s interesting how exclusively Glenn has deployed both fronts, each for a good stretch of time.
Whether that specifically deals with the T’Vondre Sweat injury, and/or other injuries such as Joseph Ossai, who’s on his way back, is unknown. Nevertheless, stopping the run is tougher in the current front currently dominating Jets camp.
Tuesday continued the worrisome trend. The team’s gap integrity remained suspect, with the interior players not holding up, and the edge players oftentimes widening too much.
That was not the case on Wednesday. Time and again, the interior held its ground — in more of a react-attack feel — while the linebackers flew around while free.
Interestingly, despite Tuesday’s struggles, Glenn’s second level showed some promising signs. Captain Demario Davis continued to do his damndest by being everywhere all at once, and Jamien Sherwood enjoyed his best day of the summer, as he played well from a backside pursuit perspective, and even picked up an A-gap-area tackle-for-loss on a play.
At least for one day, it all came together on Wednesday. Tampa had a rough go of it when rushing the ball, as the backs were continually stuck at and around the line of scrimmage, especially when running A or B-gap.
Coverage issues and Bailey watch
If Tuesday felt more balanced and vanilla, Wednesday featured more games and pressures. Even the pass-rush drills the two teams worked on together featured some offensive line communication against stunts, but more on that later.
To begin 11v11 teams, Glenn’s coverage was tremendous. A lot of it looked like man coverage with designed pressures up front, but for the most part, the coverage held up despite Baker Mayfield not feeling overwhelming heat.
On one play, David Bailey took an outside path outside of the right tackle, resulting in a semi-fly-by. However, the back-end was stellar, resulting in a coverage sack. Mayfield choked on the ball with nowhere to go, resulting in Bailey coming back to the quarterback (from behind), along with a collapsing pocket.
Unfortunately for the Jets, the coverage declined from that point forward, and it wasn’t pretty.
The teams finished the session with an end-of-game situation. Tampa’s offense started things with about two minutes left.
Much like his first play in 1v1 pass-rush drills — in which he put on a clean spin against Luke Goedeke, beating him as efficiently as possible — Bailey put up a plus play on the final drive. I’m not sure how widely reported it was, but Bailey’s outside move was on the path enough to bother Mayfield in an impactful way.
He didn’t touch Mayfield, nor did he get to the ball, but his hands were close enough to where it bothered Mayfield’s throw to the right sideline, helping force an incompletion. Seeing that sort of impact in that situation — the first play of a nut-crunching drive — is promising.
From that point forward, it was all downhill. Tampa ripped off 70-plus yards on five or six plays, resulting in a touchdown — one in which Glenn admitted afterward that they allowed the Bucs to score, based on game management.
Unlike at the start of practice, when man coverage dominated, the Jets’ softer zone-match principles just couldn’t get the job done.
Final callouts
Geno Smith sought a drive-starter on the final two-minute drill, looking to answer Mayfield’s drive, but a Braelon Allen drop started things the wrong way. (To be fair, it was probably best that he dropped it, as the minimal yardage wasn’t worth the running clock.)
A couple of intended Garrett Wilson targets fell incomplete, yet a defensive pass interference could have been called on either one. Tampa got away with a bit of a tug on Wilson’s jersey on both — one intermediate out-breaker and another seam-area soft-spot job when the Jets were looking to get into field goal range.
The failed answer resulted in an insanely long Cade York field-goal attempt that fell somewhere around the 10-yard line. Aside from an incredible Jeremy Ruckert catch against physicality, New York’s offense will be eager to make up for the ugliness that ensued at the end of Wednesday’s practice.
Along with the much stouter gap integrity, edge defender Will McDonald also flashed against the run. On a few occasions, his positioning was noticeably correct, and he even made a solo tackle or two behind or near the line of scrimmage.
Rookie Cade Klubnik is still going through ups and downs, but he opened some eyes with a couple of plays. One was a beauty of a bomb to Arian Smith on a classic post.
The New York Jets will use Thursday as a preparation day for Friday night’s preseason opener against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at MetLife Stadium.
