With less than a minute elapsed in the Monday night preseason game between the Atlanta Falcons and the New York Jets, Marcus Mariota threw a deep pass up the left side of the Jets’ defense to second-year tight end Kyle Pitts. Cornerback Bryce Hall was directed to cover Pitts deep without help, and if you watched Pitts at all in his rookie season, you know how that went. Hall tried to open his hips and stay with Pitts through the route, and that wasn’t going to happen.
Kyle Pitts is going to be a problem in this league pic.twitter.com/jqLjZcJLue
— Ari Meirov (@MySportsUpdate) August 23, 2022
The result was a 52-yard gain, and had Mariota put a little more gas behind it, that would have been an easy six. Why the Jets didn’t bracket Pitts right out of the gate, we have no idea. We learned last season that giving one guy no help when Pitts ran deep was a plan doomed to fail.
Man! It is max protection and you have a mutant running full speed at you, ON the boundary side, you better turn and run for your life! Lol https://t.co/OunpXCzXuN
— Will Blackmon 🍷 (@WillBlackmon) August 23, 2022
In his rookie campaign, with quarterback Matt Ryan, Pitts caught seven passes of 20 or more air yards on 12 targets for 239 yards, and (somehow) no touchdowns. More often than not, these deep completions were contested by single defenders, and more often than not, the result went decidedly in Atlanta’s favor.
“He’s got a really good skill set,” Ryan said of Pitts when I spoke with him about the rookie last September. “He’s big, long, very good hands, he’s very athletic, he’s an explosive runner… his ability to finish plays like that is rare from a tight end — his ability to run in space and eat up yards like he does is impressive.”
It certainly was, and Pitts created the same problem for opposing defenses that Travis Kelce of the Chiefs has established for years: One-cover-One is not a sustainable strategy.
The problem Pitts creates for your defense is similar to the problem Kelce creates. If you don’t have help up top, you are https://t.co/NNI0B3P6xy pic.twitter.com/UihRPjNWGV
— Doug Farrar ✍ (@NFL_DougFarrar) August 23, 2022
Let’s take a look back to last season, what Pitts did on deep stuff against different coverages, and why the Jets should have known better.