LACKING SACKS
Jets scrambling to address woeful pass rush
First came the free-agency splurge, then the draft, and through it all, the Jets did very little to address one of their most glaring needs.
In each of the past two seasons, Todd Bowles’ defense has ranked in the bottom five in the league in sacks. The Jets finished 5-11 in both campaigns. The combination of losing and low sack production could be mere coincidence. But it’s never a good thing to be among the bottomfeeders in any statistical category. And it’s abundantly clear that the Jets need to disrupt opposing quarterbacks more effectively, consistently and frequently in 2018 if they want to win games.
Yet general manager Mike Maccagnan made no significant moves to bolster his pass rush in free agency. (In fairness, it was a very weak class.) And he didn’t select an edge rusher in the draft. Instead, the Jets drafted two bulky defensive linemen — Nathan Shepherd out of Fort Hays St. in Round 3 and Foley Fatukasi out of UConn in Round 6 — to add depth to a position group trying to replace Muhammad Wilkerson, who was cut after last season.
So barring an unforeseen trade or last-minute addition, the Jets will enter this year with the same outside linebackers and edge rushers they used last year — aside from Kony Ealy, whom they let walk in free agency. The Jets totaled 28 sacks in 2017, the third-fewest in the AFC.
“There’s good competition there,” Bowles said Saturday after the second day of rookie minicamp in Florham Park, when asked to assess his pass rushers.
“Obviously we need better production from everybody up front from a sack standpoint, but it’s not about sacks, it’s about disrupting the quarterbacks, and we got good competition there. We got guys that we think are capable.”
As of now, those “capable” players are: third-year outside linebacker Jordan Jenkins, who has 5.5 career sacks; fourth-year outside linebacker Lorenzo Mauldin, who missed all of last season with a back injury and has 6.5 career sacks; sixth-year outside linebacker Josh Martin, who has 2.5 career sacks; sixth-year outside linebacker David Bass, who has nine career sacks; and second-year outside linebacker Dylan Donahue, a fifth-round pick in 2017 who didn’t register a sack before suffering a seasonending elbow injury after four games last year. Donahue is also entwined in legal problems after a February DWI arrest. “We just got to see who wins the spots,” Bowles said. Of course, the Jets are hoping for a bounce-back season from defensive end Leonard Williams, who finished in the top-10 in the league in QB hits last year with 25 but had just two sacks.
But if defenses can key on Williams without any true threat on the edge, the former No. 6 overall pick will have a hard time finding the lanes necessary to produce and dominate.
“It’s not imperative to get more sacks,” Bowles said. “It’s more imperative to stop them from getting first downs — be that of sack or pass breakups, it doesn’t matter. We’re not worried about stats. We’re just worrying about winning games.”
“I want to see an improvement in wins,” Bowles added. “Sacks is not my concern if we’re winning ballgames.”
It’s possible Shepherd could contribute sacks in his rookie season next year. The 6-4, 315-pound lineman had four sacks and 12.5 tackles for loss while facing a heavy dose of double teams in Division II last season. Shepherd got his first taste of Bowles’ defense this weekend at rookie minicamp.
“No one’s slotting into any position whatsoever,” Shepherd said. “Any position that I would play in the future is something that I got to earn.”
When asked if he expects Shepherd to have an impact as a pass rusher this season, Bowles responded, “We’ll see.”
“We expect him to have an impact as a defensive lineman. But sacks come differently for different people,” Bowles said. “As long as he does what he’s supposed to do — which we’re sure he will — we’ll get better.”