With only four games remaining on their schedule and any playoff hopes a distant memory, the Jets will spend the final four weeks of the season keeping a very close eye on rookie safety Calvin Pryor.\u00a0 Taking Pryor with the 18th overall selection was a surprise move to say the least.\u00a0 Many pundits speculated that GM John Idzik would address their need for offensive playmaker or a cornerback,\u00a0depending on who was available when they were on the clock.\u00a0 The Jets\u00a0surprised\u00a0their fans\u00a0when they decided\u00a0to go with Pryor out of Louisville where he had\u00a0earned the nickname the “Louisville Slugger”,\u00a0due to his physical style of play.<\/p>\n
Following\u00a0Pryor’s selection, Jets Head Coach Rex Ryan spoke glowingly of the rookie’s ability to be an “enforcer” in the defensive backfield, comparing him to long-time Oakland Raiders safety Jack Tatum.\u00a0 Pryor\u00a0was\u00a0going to be a player who would make teams fear throwing over the middle, and his jarring hits would help the\u00a0 Jets secondary force more turnovers.\u00a0So far, things have not gone according to plan.<\/p>\n
Pryor has yet to make an impact play for the Jets and his name is often being called when opposing receivers are making big plays.\u00a0 His game has been scrutinized\u00a0due to his struggles in\u00a0 pass coverage, and taking \u00a0bad angles in pursuit.\u00a0 To be fair to Pryor, he was drafted to be an intimidator and the knock on him coming out of college was his ability to defend the pass.\u00a0 With so many glaring holes in the secondary, the Jets have had to use\u00a0the rookie\u00a0in coverage far more than anticipated, and that has been a major factor in\u00a0his struggles.\u00a0 Pryor however, will get\u00a0little sympathy from Jets fans after it was\u00a0learned that the rookie has been late to several defensive meetings this season which led to his being benched against the Pittsburgh Steelers in week 10.<\/p>\n
Pryor has an overall positive grade on the season from PFF.com but that’s due largely in part to his strong play against the run.\u00a0 Expectations have to be higher when talking about a first round selection in a pass oriented league.\u00a0 Over the past several weeks the Jets have cut back on Pryor’s reps, but they were back on the upswing this Monday night against the Miami Dolphins.\u00a0 In his previous two games, Pryor played in only 25% of the defenses snaps.\u00a0 Against Miami however, that number jumped to 40% (24-60).\u00a0 Over the next few weeks it’s likely Pryor will continue to see additional playing time and have the opportunity to improve his play, and turn the naysayers into believers.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With only four games remaining on their schedule and any playoff hopes a distant memory, the Jets will spend the final four weeks of the season keeping a very close eye on rookie safety Calvin Pryor.\u00a0 Taking Pryor with the 18th overall selection was a surprise move to say the least.\u00a0 Many pundits speculated that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":27189,"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":[1337,213],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-27188","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-home-slider","8":"category-jet-news"},"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/IMG_4714.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peLffi-74w","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27188","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=27188"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27190,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27188\/revisions\/27190"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}