Now, we understand why Rex Ryan wanted Tim Tebow to run the single wing. As mercilessly as Mark Sanchez gets clowned for his extensive shortcomings as a pocket passer, the talent around him may actually be worse.
The skills he does have are suppressed by uninspiring offensive gameplanning, atrocious receivers and a lethargic ground game that could fall into a comatose state this season after losing Shonn Greene to Tennessee. Santonio Holmes should be ready for the season opener after tearing his ACL midway through last season, but the Jets will be breaking in unproven Jeff Cumberland at tight end after Dustin Keller signed with Miami in the offseason and clowned Ryan on his way out the door .
On Tuesday, the Oakland Raiders quarterbacks sent the forward pass back 50 years. On Wednesday, the Jets receivers took it back to the rubber helmet era by dropping more balls than Tiger Woods at the Masters. On Wednesday, Ryan attempted to light a fuse underneath his receivers by threatening their job security. You know things are bad when Antonio Cromartie is squawking about being the second-best receiver on your roster and Braylon Edwards is your possible free agent safety valve. Unfortunately, airing New York's dirty laundry to the media is the opposite of the toned down locker room atmosphere he promised a few months ago and is another tally on an infinite list of reasons why the Machiavellian Belichick is a superior coach .
Via ESPN New York:
"It has to get better. The fact that I've told everybody about it, is it putting pressure on them? Well, the NFL is a pressure game, you should catch the football," Ryan said, adding that there were even a pair of drops during the team's walk-through Wednesday.
"That's your job, and certainly we know we have to do a better job, but I expect it to happen immediately and it never happened yesterday, either," Ryan said. "We'll have to try to fix that one way or the other. If that's with other players, so be it. If that's guys stepping up and focusing and concentrating more on doing something that should be natural to them, that's a possibility also."
The pass-catchers had a rough day on Wednesday as Stephen Hill,Jeremy Kerley and even tight end Jeff Cumberland were among those who dropped passes. Hill, the team's second-round pick in the 2012 draft, has particularly struggled to keep his hands on passes, a problem that plagued him last season.
Ryan said the team stresses and teaches all the fundamentals of catching passes and couldn't single out one reason for the multitude of drops. He added that it hasn't been a case of one player contributing most of the drops, but it's been spread across the receivers.
"Whether it's a lack of focus, whether it's a technique thing with hands in different positions, it's probably all of the above," Ryan said. "To me, if you're a receiver, it's hard to expect to make a football team or have a huge contribution if you can't catch the football or you're not consistently catching the football."
