Week 1 is always a challenge for NFL teams. It is hard to game-plan for a team who has not yet played a game. Teams show nothing and play nobody in the preseason anymore. For the Jets, the challenge of this week has been even tougher since the Ravens changed defensive coordinators.
Baltimore hired Mike Macdonald this offseason to replace longtime coordinator Wink Martindale, who is now in the same role with the Giants. Macdonald had been a position coach in Baltimore for several years under Martindale then went to Michigan last year to be the Wolverines’ coordinator.
That meant Jets offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur spent a lot of time watching Big Ten football recently.
“I mean, that was his first-year coordinating, so you had to put in a lot of time,” LaFleur said. “I mean, there’s probably about 1,100 plays of Michigan defense and you tried to figure out the defenses, the games, the offenses that kind of had an NFL style type deal, so you got to watch the Georgias, the Michigan States, somewhat of the Ohio States, even though they’re a little bit more open than most NFL teams, but yeah, you have to go back and leave no stone unturned.”
Mike LaFleurBill Kostroun
Mike McDonaldGetty ImagesThis is LeFleur’s second year on the job and he feels more comfortable now than he did a year ago.
“It’s Week One, so is there more comfort going into year two?” LaFleur said. “Yeah, there’s more comfort anytime you have experience in anything, but again, there’s so much because it’s game one that you have to be prepared for, to get your players prepared for it, but yeah, I’d say the comforts definitely there.”
The Jets have emphasized on defense this week that they must stop the Ravens on first and second downs in order to keep Lamar Jackson and company out of third-and-short when they almost always convert.
“When you go back and look at it, typically, when you watch a team and you study short yardages, three, four short-yard snaps a game,” Jets defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich said. “It feels like these guys have 10, 11, 12, 13 third-and-1s, third-and-2s, fourth-and-1s a game, so they live in that third-and-short window because they are so efficient on first and second down, so to keep them out of short yards, we’ve got to win first down, we do, we’ve got to win first down.
“It goes back to the run defense, has to be exceptional this game and if you do that, you give yourself an opportunity to play against a little bit more normal football on second down and when you do that, hopefully you can get them into the third and longer windows where it gives us the ability to be a little bit more creative.”
