{"id":37810,"date":"2017-10-24T12:58:40","date_gmt":"2017-10-24T16:58:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jetnation.com\/?p=37810"},"modified":"2017-10-24T12:58:40","modified_gmt":"2017-10-24T16:58:40","slug":"an-assist-for-baldy-as-wilk-wakes-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/2017\/10\/24\/an-assist-for-baldy-as-wilk-wakes-up\/","title":{"rendered":"An Assist for &#8220;Baldy&#8221; as Wilk Wakes up?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Up until this Sunday&#8217;s game against the Miami Dolphins, Jets defensive lineman Muhammad Wilkerson had spent much of the previous 20+ games in cruise control.\u00a0 Losing one-on-one battles and stat lines that included far to many zeros had become the norm.<\/p>\n<p>Challenging Wilkerson publicly may have been one route to light a fire under him and get his motor running again.\u00a0 That criticism wasn&#8217;t going to come from anyone at 1 Jets drive as Todd Bowles and Kacy Rodger heaped praise on the sackless Wilkerson, saying they were happy with his effort and that he was giving &#8220;his all&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>As a result, when challenged by the media for his lack of production (9 solo tackles\/0 sacks through week six), Wilkerson&#8217;s reply was that if the coaches were happy with him, then he was doing his job.<\/p>\n<p>Enter Brian Baldinger.<\/p>\n<p>A former NFL offensive lineman and current analyst, Baldinger reviews each week&#8217;s film extensively and was the first high-profile analyst to single out Wilkerson for his lack of effort.\u00a0 While speaking on SirusXM&#8217;s NFL channel, Baldinger said that Wilkerson &#8220;is not interested in playing&#8221;.\u00a0 He went on to single out Wilkerson in several cut ups.<\/p>\n<div class=\"embed-twitter\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">This is not the technique  taught to take on a double team. Mo Wilkerson was invisible Sunday. What are the Jets saying ? <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/BaldyBreakdowns?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#BaldyBreakdowns<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/L0w7mb4XD3\">pic.twitter.com\/L0w7mb4XD3<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Brian Baldinger (@BaldyNFL) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BaldyNFL\/status\/920098688759992320?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 17, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/div>\n<p>After being roasted by a former player with accompanying video to show the lack of effort, Wilkerson not only played despite being on the team&#8217;s injury report all season, but he turned it what was easily his best performance in over a year of the year in terms of both effort and production.\u00a0 Wilkerson had a season-high four tackles to go along with a quarterback hurry and an interception off of an outstanding tipped pass at the line by rookie safety Jamal Adams.<\/p>\n<p>Even when he wasn&#8217;t making plays, there was an effort level from Wilkerson that had been missing for much of his past 20 games.<\/p>\n<p>It would have been nice if Wilkerson had been called out by his own coaching staff sooner, but whether it was Bowels or Baldy, it looks like a case of better late than never.<\/p>\n<p>Whether or not this continues and leads to the Jets retaining Wilkerson for $17 million next season is another story altogether.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Up until this Sunday&#8217;s game against the Miami Dolphins, Jets defensive lineman Muhammad Wilkerson had spent much of the previous 20+ games in cruise control.\u00a0 Losing one-on-one battles and stat lines that included far to many zeros had become the norm. Challenging Wilkerson publicly may have been one route to light a fire under him [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":34846,"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],"tags":[2770],"class_list":{"0":"post-37810","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-featured-editorials","8":"tag-brian-baldinger"},"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/IMG_3576-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peLffi-9PQ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37810","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=37810"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37811,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37810\/revisions\/37811"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}