Spoiled Season

In spite of the offsides and the whole being massively overweight thing Jenkins played pretty well last year. Granted that was to try and get more money from the team, but he did play well.

 

Still, we were 7-9 and I can not help but believe a healthy Jake would have been good for two or three more wins.

 

Yeah I guess I've been brainwashed.

 

I agree with most of your other stuff but the attitude seems to be that people remember Jenkins' poor play ever since we traded him. D-line as a whole is still worrisome, Jenkins' loss being a big part of that.

 

he had a couple sacks and 13 pressures, which is still good from any DT over 310. Walker and Lewis should be able to approximate something in there, and they'll have some DEs rushing inside to help that pressure too, but certainly Jenkins' physical presence for both run and pass will be missed. His distraction and mind-sucking selfishness are hard to keep on a team and I don't see how he's going to fit with the Jets' disciplined system when he couldn't stay at home well enough in a one-gap. But he'll be a player who can go from a 3-4 base to be a good rusher in a 4-man nickel rush line, and that's valuable in itself.

We stopped the run well, we just couldn't rush the passer so we didn't do anything on 3rd down. So we had a bunch of run yards anyway. My expectation is that we should still be solid against the run for the DL and our LBs are still the same, so everything but 3rd down still looks good. The concern there now is whether we'll get enough from Peppers, and whether anyone else can provide good outside rush, since nickel is a very transparent place to blitz from.

as for Delhomme re: meatpile, certainly there's a part of that for leadership, and continuity during a change to different terminology and so on. Plus the emotional moodswing of going from a guy everyone loves to a guy that I'm surprised didn't hang at halftime. I can't explain losing at home, but I can see where a lot of the other parts came from, and a portion of it despite silly "passion" jokes was clearly a team that was dealing with some issues.

 

That sounds logical now, but the fact of the matter is that we were discussing the team's major problems before Jake even went down.

With a healthy Jake we got blown the fuck out at home by Houston, and almost all our losses were blowouts, so no.

 

Jenkins was a good run stuffer last year. He has lost his ability to be a disruptive force like he had in 2003. Injury, age and weight have taken that from him. Nothing wrong with being a good run stuffer though. I doubt we will suffer much for his not being there though. Kemo is a big guy and should good against the run. With our linebackers our run D should be pretty good even with average DTs. The real problem is our lack of pass rush. If Peppers can regain his form that will solve a lot of it. Other guys can get there if Peppers is a monster and demanding a lot of attention and double teams.

 

No, you're wrong. Jenkins was still a disruptive force in the middle, which is why some teams interviewed about Carolina's defense said last year that they felt they needed to double-team Jenkins, not Peppers.

You doubt it because you don't recognize what you're watching on Sundays, you only go by what someone else says. Someone who knows what they're looking at realizes that we're going to miss Jenkins a lot, but I also understand that the team felt like he was a distraction.

Kemoeatu is adequate at absolute best. Ray Lewis was glad to get rid of him because he didn't feel like Ma'ake occupied blockers very well, and unfortunately he hasn't shown much of that ability here either. Sometimes he is able to get good push, but most of the time one blocker gets under his pads and uses that leverage to keep him occupied. Ideally you'd like that DT to either be occupying a double-team with the center or being disruptive. He's neither.

The team definitely needs Peppers to have a big year and I expect him to do so, but that won't really affect how good or bad the other linemen are at rushing the passer. Hopefully some other guys step up, but it's an area of concern.

 

We will never know but I am not willing to say that the team would have sucked all year even with Jake based on one loss to Houston. Our quarterback play after Jake went down was horrible. We lost at home to Atlanta by 7 so that one might have been different with Jake. We also lost to Dallas by 7 when they were in that late season slump. If those two were wins we would have been 9-7. We lost to Tampa 20-7 when our offense was completely awful in Carr's first start so 10-6 could have happened and with it a division title.

 

So if Peppers commands double teams and draws the quarterback's attention to his side of the line that will not help the other pass rushers have an easier job of things?