By Glenn Naughton<\/p>\n
As Mike Maccagnan and the New York Jets move forward in assembling their roster for the 2015 season, last year’s achilles heel on defense could wind up being\u00a0one of the\u00a0best in the NFL, but questions about the secondary still linger.<\/p>\n
Importing free agent cornerbacks Darrelle Revis<\/a>, Antonio Cromartie<\/a> and Buster Skrine<\/a> will move two of the top cornerbacks\u00a0from last year’s roster, Dee Milliner and Dexter McDougle, down the depth chart and in to the trainers room.\u00a0 The\u00a0group Maccagnan has\u00a0put together\u00a0removes any sense of urgency to rush either\u00a0Milliner or McDougle\u00a0back on to the field after spending last season on injured reserve.<\/p>\n With the corners locked up and ready to go, the biggest question mark in the Jets secondary becomes second year safety Calvin Pryor.\u00a0 A first round pick out of Louisville last season, the 18th overall selection struggled for much of the\u00a0year in coverage while also leading the team in missed tackles with fifteen.\u00a0 While new secondary coach Joe Danna<\/a> will work with Pryor and the rest of the defensive backs this season, Todd Bowles’ background as a player and defensive coordinator has some Jets fans feeling good about\u00a0the youngster’s\u00a0future, but are those fans jumping the gun?<\/p>\n A safety himself, the undrafted Bowles played 117 career NFL games for the Washington Redskins and San Francisco 49ers after spending his college years at Temple University.\u00a0\u00a0The rookie head coach\u00a0will have his work cut out for him with Pryor, but working with a struggling young safety won’t be anything new for Bowles.\u00a0 Last season in Arizona\u00a0he had another first round rookie in\u00a0Deone Bucannon patrolling his secondary in a myriad of roles and the overall results weren’t encouraging.<\/p>\n Selected\u00a027th overall in the first round, nine slots after the Jets took Pryor, Bucannon would see significant playing time for Bowles with the Cardinals.\u00a0 Flanked by Patrick Peterson and Antonio Cromartie at the cornerback positions would have meant a heavy workload for Bucannon\u00a0as Pryor teamed with Darrin Walls, Antonio Allen and undrafted rookie cornerback Marcus Williams.<\/p>\n While Bucannon was sometimes used in a non-traditional safety role as Bowles would utilize him as a “dime” linebacker, the strong safety who, like Pryor, came with a reputation as being strong against the run wasn’t much better against the ground game than against the pass.<\/p>\n According to NFL statistical website PFF.com,<\/a>\u00a0of the\u00a0six rookie safeties who took part in at least 25% of their teams defensive plays, Bucannon\u00a0graded out\u00a0a distant sixth, behind Tre Boston of Carolina (5.6), Pryor (3.3), Bears rookie Brock Vereen (-0.8), Pierre Warren of the Saints (-1.5), Green Bay’s HaHa Clinton-Dix (-2.4) and then there was Bucannon (-12.4).\u00a0 While PFF’s numbers are far from scientific, they are reliable enough at this point that several outlets have cited the use of their data by player agents as well as some NFL\u00a0head coaches<\/a>\u00a0and front offices in contract negotiations and player evaluation.\u00a0 That fact alone lends more credence to PFF data than some fans\u00a0may be\u00a0willing to accept.<\/p>\n Perhaps the most concerning aspect of PFF’s evaluation of Bucannon\u00a0is the fact that his overall score placed him not only last among rookies, but 80th out of 85 NFL safeties this season,\u00a0coupled with\u00a0the fact that\u00a0rather than showing progress,\u00a0the\u00a0youngster\u00a0regressed over the season’s final six games.\u00a0 A look at the Cardinals\u00a0final three regular season games and round one playoff loss\u00a0show Bucannon earning four of his seven total negative grades on the season with each one being slightly worse than the week before.\u00a0 Pryor on the other hand\u00a0was credited\u00a0an average or above average rating in all but one contest, the Jets’ week four\u00a0matchup against the Detroit Lions.<\/p>\n Neither player was regarded as being particularly strong against the pass and both were exploited throughout the season.\u00a0 Pryor of course faced fewer opportunities as opposing quarterbacks had little reason to throw away from Jets cornerbacks.\u00a0 As a result,\u00a0he had just 19 passes thrown to a receiver\u00a0in which\u00a0the primary defender.\u00a0 The result was a 78.9% completion percentage as quarterbacks connected on fifteen of those attempts.\u00a0 Bucannon on the other hand was targeted 51 times, 43 of which resulted in a completion.\u00a0 The 84.3% completion percentage would rank Bucannon dead last in the NFL among safeties who played at least 450 snaps.<\/p>\n Against the run, each player’s supposed strong suit, Pryor earned an overall\u00a0positive grade of 2.6, while Bucannon finished up at -6.4, again placing him 80th among NFL safeties, and last among rookies.<\/p>\n So while both players are still in the infancy of their NFL careers, a side by side comparison of the two struggling rookies and their on-field results may give some Jets fans pause in the assumption that simply having Bowles present will be a quick-fix for Pryor.\u00a0 However, the overall success of Bowles’ secondary despite<\/em> Bucannon’s struggles should mean no shortage of optimism for a defense that added a pair of shutdown corners that will allow Bowles to make the Jets defense a safe bet to be blitz-happy once again.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Glenn Naughton As Mike Maccagnan and the New York Jets move forward in assembling their roster for the 2015 season, last year’s achilles heel on defense could wind up being\u00a0one of the\u00a0best in the NFL, but questions about the secondary still linger. Importing free agent cornerbacks Darrelle Revis, Antonio Cromartie and Buster Skrine will […]<\/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":[6,1337],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-28017","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\/12\/IMG_4714.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peLffi-7hT","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28017","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=28017"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28027,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28017\/revisions\/28027"}],"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=28017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}