Maye’s play adds additional safety
CINCINNATI — The Jets have one safety who gets all the headlines: Jamal Adams. But they have another safety making key plays for them.
Marcus Maye is not as flashy as Adams and does not get as much attention, but he came up with a huge play last week against the Raiders, stuffing a fourthdown run. It was the latest big play by one of the team’s steadiest players.
“He’s been consistent. He’s reliable,” coach Adam Gase said. “He’s probably one of the smarter players that we have on defense — his knowledge of football is outstanding. He’s one of those guys, it’s kind of having an extra quarterback on the field in the secondary. You’ve got two guys that do such a great job of playing off each other and the communication that [Maye has with Adams] is unreal. They’re always talking off the field, on the field, in a game, in practice. You just really, you can see why they play well together because their communication is off the charts.”
Maye has 41 tackles and four passes defensed this season. But the key stat for Maye has been 11 — as in 11 games played. He has managed to stay healthy after playing just six games last year.
“Marcus is a very intelligent, instinctive player that has a skill set at the free safety position to where he can also play in some coverage corner positions, too,” defensive coordinator Gregg Williams said. “He’s done a lot of that in his life. He also is physical and can play that physical game that you want your safeties to be able to do. He’s fit in very well for us here. It’s been good to see, knock on wood, that he stays healthy and the biggest thing for him now is to continue to have those healthy profiles, healthy games to where he can continue to show everybody he’s just scratched the surface and how good he can be too. Next thing is taking the ball away more.”
One of the things Jets coaches have wanted to see more of from WR Robby Anderson is catching contested passes. He showed progress in that area last week with a couple of difficult grabs that resulted in big plays. Anderson had contested receptions of 31 and 30 yards.
“He made a couple contested catches that we needed him to make,” offensive coordinator Dowell Loggains said, “and just getting those opportunities down the field and continue to build confidence with him and Sam and their rapport. It helps, obviously, a ton when you start creating explosive plays and making contested catches.”