By Glenn Naughton<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mired in a lost season with\u00a0 a last place 2-8 record, it’s hard to imagine that the New York Jets have had any players who have performed well enough to earn any real Pro-Bowl consideration. That’s what happens when you’re on pace for a three or four win season with an eight game losing streak thrown in the mix.\u00a0 Despite their struggles as a team however, the Jets currently have three\u00a0players on their roster who are performing at a high enough\u00a0level to warrant pro-bowl consideration.\u00a0 Center Nick Mangold, and defensive ends Mohammad Wilkerson and Sheldon Richardson have been playing lights out\u00a0at their respective positions.\u00a0 Using player analysis statistics from PFF.com, we look at who deserves to be recognized on a roster that has too little talent at too many key positions.<\/p>\n
In his ninth season out of Ohio State, Mangold has played at a pro-bowl level for the majority of his career and this season has been no different.\u00a0 Despite\u00a0being on an offensive line that has struggled as a group, the Jets are still 5th in the NFL in rushing yards and\u00a0he’s a big reason why.\u00a0 Mangold has been one of the leagues premiere centers this season and is currently rated as the best\u00a0center in the NFL.\u00a0 Through ten games\u00a0he has allowed just one sack and is second only\u00a0to Seattle’s Max Unger as a run blocker.\u00a0 Mangold has flourished in both phases of the game at his position, and while he hasn’t dominated in the screen game, he has been average\u00a0even on his\u00a0worst day.\u00a0\u00a0That\u00a0speaks volumes about the\u00a0 mobility, and effort of a player in his ninth season with no realistic post-season expectations.<\/p>\n
On the defensive side of the ball, there\u00a0has been\u00a0little praise for the Jets as they have failed time and again to get off the field on third down despite consistently being able to force their opponents into third and long situations.\u00a0\u00a0All things considered, the\u00a0Jets\u00a0secondary has done an admirable job against some of the league’s elite offenses, but still\u00a0not enough to garner the wins to go along with it.\u00a0 Against Peyton Manning, the defense held Denver so a season-low 237 passing yards, and are one of only three teams to hold Aaron Rodgers below 60% completion percentage.\u00a0 While these numbers don’t mean anything in the win\/loss column, they do show that somebody, somewhere is doing their job and doing it well.\u00a0 That somebody, or those somebodies are Mohammed Wilkerson and Sheldon Richardson.\u00a0 Wilkerson, the cornerstone of the defense, and Richardson, the reigning defensive rookie of the year have been as good as advertised this season, but strong performances tend to go unnoticed when a team is out of the playoff hunt before Halloween.<\/p>\n
Wilkerson and Richardson have been dominant all season long and a big reason why the Jets have been able to stay competitive in situations that they likely would have otherwise been blown out.\u00a0 While the two have produced a low sack total (9),\u00a0much of that is a result of the 3-4 defense that the Jets run.\u00a0 As a matter of fact, despite Wilkerson and Richardson combining for just nine sacks with five and four respectively, it still places them\u00a0among the top-6 among 3-4 DE’s individually.\u00a0 Houston’s JJ Watt is the only 3-4 DE in the NFL with double-digit sacks (10).\u00a0 In addition to the nine\u00a0sacks, the pair are tied for fourth in the NFL among 3-4 DE’s with 7 quarterback hits apiece, and have added 33 quarterback pressures.\u00a0 Again, both those statistics place Wilkerson and Richardson in the top nine in the NFL.<\/p>\n
Against the run, the two have\u00a0also played at an elite level for much of the season.\u00a0 Wilkerson is the #1 overall rated player against the run, with Richardson coming in 3rd.\u00a0This puts the two players in the top-3 against the run, top-8 against the pass, which is good enough 2nd and 5th overall on the season.\u00a0 All of this despite the fact that the secondary they’re playing in front of is allowing opposing quarterbacks to complete over 64% of their passes with a quarterback rating of 108.8.\u00a0 As a unit, Rex Ryan’s group has been bad, but it’s hard to imagine where they’d be without Wilkerson and Richardson up front.\u00a0 That should\u00a0make it\u00a0hard for anyone to ignore the big D-linemen no matter what the team’s record, but time will tell.<\/p>\n
It’s also worth\u00a0 noting that despite occupying the cellar of the AFC East, the numbers being put up by the two are an improvement over their performances last year.\u00a0 All of last season Wilkerson had six games in which he graded out as having an “above average” performance.\u00a0 This season, through ten games he’s already\u00a0\u00a0outpaced that with\u00a0eight such ratings.\u00a0 Richardson on the other hand had six games in which he earned an “average” individual score last season.\u00a0 This season, he has had only two, with one of those being right at the threshold of being above average and he\u00a0is yet to\u00a0earn a “below average” grade through ten games.<\/p>\n
The Jets still have six games remaining on the schedule which is plenty of time for any these players to see a dip in their performance as the games mean less and less\u00a0each week.\u00a0 However,\u00a0if Mangold, Wilkerson, and Richardson continue to churn out performances the way they have over the season’s first ten games, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t expect to be asked to suit up\u00a0in Arizona on January 25th.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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By Glenn Naughton Mired in a lost season with\u00a0 a last place 2-8 record, it’s hard to imagine that the New York Jets have had any players who have performed well enough to earn any real Pro-Bowl consideration. That’s what happens when you’re on pace for a three or four win season with an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":27026,"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-27025","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\/2014\/11\/IMG_4655.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peLffi-71T","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27025","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=27025"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27027,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27025\/revisions\/27027"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}