The Jets secondary is as depleted as it has ever been this season.
New York will likely be without its star safety Jamal Adams due to an ankle injury. Meanwhile, both Brian Poole (concussion) and Arthur Maulet (calf) are trending towards being out as well. That means the Jets will have only two members of their secondary playing in Sunday’s game that started in Week 1 in Marcus Maye and Darryl Roberts.
In other words, the unit is looking extremely vulnerable heading into Week 14.
Defensive coordinator Gregg Williams has already coached up this defense to be respectable, but this might be his biggest challenge yet.
“He’ll have to get creative this week, which I’m sure he doesn’t mind,”Adam Gase said of Williams.
We could be seeing multiple players playing in different positions on Sunday. With Adams out, Roberts could see some time at safety as he played at that position for five games last season. As for the slot, Nate Hairston will have to play on the inside. To replace Maulet, the Jets will have to slide Maurice Canady to the outside. It’s not an ideal situation, but there’s not much else they can do to fix this.
“You have to have the contingency plans of what if somebody goes out, how are we shuffling things around,” Gase said. “We’ve got a lot of guys that are going to be responsible for playing a few different positions.”
The last time the Dolphins faced the Jets, Ryan Fitzpatrick threw for 288 yards and three touchdowns in a win. That was when New York’s secondary was considered healthy. Since that game, Fitzpatrick has thrown for over 300 yards twice and wide receiver DeVante Parker has had over 100 receiving yards in two of his last three games. If Fitzpatrick and the rest of the Dolphins continue to play the way they have lately, the Jets’ defense will be in deep trouble.
“They’re throwing the ball, which I’m sure [Fitzpatrick] loves,” Gase said. “He had a good game last week. The last time we played him, we struggled to get him to turn the ball over and create enough pressure to make him uncomfortable. That’s the number one thing when you’re playing Fitzy is you’ve got to try to get to him, you’ve got to try to get him to make some mistakes and put pressure on him and make some of those throws tough.”