Saturday, August 21st Thoughts on Jets Training Camp

In the New York Jets’ last Monday nights 31-16 loss to the New York Giants Rex Ryan played his first unit starters the entire first half and went into the locker room with a 13-10 lead. Quarterback Mark Sanchez threw an awful first pass interception that led to the Giants scoring early. As I watched the game on TV with my Wife I yelled “TIPPED OVER THE MIDDLE, IT WILL GET PICKED” and that’s exactly what happened. Sanchez came back and had a terrific half of football with 13-for-17 passing for 119 yards, a short touchdown pass to Brad Smith, one interception and three scores on his five offensive drives. This performance is a long way from a regular season NFL game but if Sanchez plays that kind of football the Jets will have a much better chance of bettering their 9-7 record from last season. In fact they will need Sanchez to take that leap in performance. Most starting NFL quarterbacks need a few seasons to get acclimated to the speed of the game. But my biggest concern is whether starting running back Shonn Greene can stay on the field the entire season and play at a high level. I was happy to see the Jets and Darrelle Revis’ agents stop their yapping about Revis’ contract negotiations. I wonder if Revis himself was pissed off with the dopey portrayal of him in the first episode of Hard Knocks last week. Ryan was doing a “bed check” and was looking for Revis in his empty room. The F bombs and dopey commentary was toned down for this weeks episode. I’d like to continue to see more of the real grit of football as they started to portray in episode two. All in all I can’t wait for the season to begin to go to the new Meadowlands Stadium for the Jet home Monday Night Opener against Ryan’s old team the Baltimore Ravens. J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS!