Last season, Jets Head Coach Rex Ryan led his team to an improbable\u00a08-8 finish.\u00a0 Improbable for a myriad of reasons.\u00a0 He had a rookie quarterback who wasn’t ready.\u00a0 He had a rookie cornerback\u00a0who wasn’t ready.\u00a0 He converted Quinton Coples, who was supposed to be one of \u00a0his best pass-rushers\u00a0from DE to OLB\u00a0on short notice. That, and an ankle injury during the pre-season meant that Coples\u00a0also wasn’t ready.\u00a0 His best receiver, Santonio\u00a0Holmes\u00a0was coming back from a major injury and when the games\u00a0started, and he too\u00a0wasn’t ready.\u00a0 The pundits called the Jets the worst team in the NFL and said that a three win season wasn’t out of\u00a0the question.\u00a0 Ryan used those predictions to light a fire under\u00a0 his team, and somehow managed to scheme the Jets’\u00a0to a .500 finish.\u00a0 That\u00a0was good enough to convince owner\u00a0Woody Johnson to bring\u00a0\u00a0Ryan back for another season.\u00a0However,\u00a0as challenging as last season was for Ryan, this\u00a0season may prove to be even more difficult.<\/p>\n
General Manager John Idzik improved the offense by adding wide receiver Eric Decker, quarterback Michael Vick, and running back Chris Johnson.\u00a0 He also drafted a pass-catching tight end in Jace\u00a0Amaro.\u00a0 However, despite those upgrades, it’s the defensive side of the ball that has the fans worried for a change.\u00a0 Injuries\u00a0and a bizarre\u00a0incident with CB Dimitri Patterson that led to his release leaves the Jets with a patchwork secondary and only one week of practice to break in a couple of last-minute additions (CB’s Phillip Adams and Leon McFadden).<\/p>\n
Ryan has built\u00a0a reputation in the NFL as a defensive genius.\u00a0 Since taking over as co-ordinator for the Baltimore Ravens in 2005, last year was the first time a Rex Ryan defense\u00a0finished out of the top-10 when the Jets came in 11th overall.\u00a0 Even with that on his resume, and despite his public support for his players, Ryan knows that the Jets’ beleaguered secondary\u00a0is going to have their work cut out for them.\u00a0 From weeks 2-7 the Jets will face Aaron Rodgers, Jay Cutler, Matthew Stafford, Philip Rivers, Peyton Manning, and then on four days rest, Tom Brady in New England.\u00a0 Ryan doesn’t know when second year\u00a0CB Dee Milliner will be back, and he doesn’t know how converted safety Antonio Allen is going to hold up in\u00a0 his place.\u00a0 This could also be the first extensive action at CB for Darrin Walls depending on what Ryan does when Milliner finally does return from his high ankle sprain.\u00a0 All of this, with the Jets’ schedule, is going to be a monumental challenge.<\/p>\n
So with all of the uncertainty already surrounding the Jets, and with time running out before 1p.m. on Sunday, one of the few things we do know, is that the Jets need Ryan to be at the top of his game to face the week 2-7 gauntlet, and unlike last year, the youngsters better be ready.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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Last season, Jets Head Coach Rex Ryan led his team to an improbable\u00a08-8 finish.\u00a0 Improbable for a myriad of reasons.\u00a0 He had a rookie quarterback who wasn’t ready.\u00a0 He had a rookie cornerback\u00a0who wasn’t ready.\u00a0 He converted Quinton Coples, who was supposed to be one of \u00a0his best pass-rushers\u00a0from DE to OLB\u00a0on short notice. That, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":23503,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,1337],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-26209","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-featured-editorials","8":"category-home-slider"},"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/RexRyan.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peLffi-6OJ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26209"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26212,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26209\/revisions\/26212"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}