We are combining the “Pity Petty” and “Petty Help” articles from here on out, so they will be seen together. In this fashion, we can have a three day release schedule of “Petty Nation”, “Petty’s Friends”, and “Petty Crimes” without venturing too far into the excitement for the next game. In this article, we’ll look at how his teammates performed this past week against the Dolphins. This week will have an unusually high number of examples. The example will have captions on them for the first time, showing the down and distance.
1)
The Dolphins are in a single high safety look at the onset of, with man coverage. Once he executes the play action, Petty’s first read in Quincy Enunwa, who has beaten his defender, but there is a second linebacker in the area, and Petty pump fakes to him. Petty’s second read is Anderson, but the throwing lane is blocked by the defender on Seferian-Jenkins, which would force Petty to lob the ball over the defender before Anderson’s defender can make a play. Instead, Petty goes to his third receiver in Jenkins, and places the throw on his outside shoulder because there is a defender to the inside. Jenkins just drops the pass. Petty did everything well on this play, but Jenkins fails with the catch. As we have seen with Petty, and other young QBs, the linebacker away from the man coverage over the middle is often missed, which leads to bad interceptions. In this case, Petty sees the linebacker in time, and moves onto his other reads, which is encouraging. Remember how in the past weeks, we pointed out that single high safety with press coverage meant that Petty would look for the deep outside route? Well the Dolphins apparently caught on as well because that’s exactly what they are trying to bait Petty into here. On the right side of the formation, Marshall is in press coverage, but the safety runs over to his side to defend a deep pass anticipating a go route. On the left side of the formation, the defender on Anderson backs up late to create more space between him and the rookie, so he could defend a deep pass better. Petty does a good job of not calling an audible for the deep pass here, which creates a situation where they should have picked up a few yards, if not more.
2)
If this play looks familiar, it’s the exact same play by the Dolphins which caused Petty to get hurt, exact same play. They have two linebackers in the middle showing blitz (who back out), with four wide defensive lineman. This play is here because Brandon Shell makes a terrible play here. He lets the outside defender get a free run at Petty, and goes to double team the defensive tackle. The Dolphins show blitz, which confuses the young offensive line. There has been some blame for Petty for not calling better protection, but Shell has to cover his man, instead of heading inside here. Petty deserves some of the blame as well because he makes a bad read. There is a quick pass set up for Eric Tomlinson to the right of the formation, and in the face of what looks like a blitz, Petty should have thrown the pass towards Tomlinson. However, there is no reason for a defensive end to have a free run at the QB, so the biggest culprit here seems to be Shell. It looks like Petty assumed there was going to be a blitz, which would have left the middle of the field open, so when the linebackers backed out, he was left without an option. This is a combined failure on the team’s part, but Shell deserves some of the blame for this, along with Petty making a bad read. The good thing about this is that, the Dolphins repeated the same exact play in the 4th quarter when Petty got hurt, and he quickly realized the play was to the outside, so that shows some in game progression, albeit it ended badly for him.
3)
The Dolphins are playing single high safety on this play expecting run, and they bite hard for the play fake. Brandon Marshall has one on one coverage to the right side of the formation, as Petty rolls out of the pocket and throws a decent pass to Marshall. The failure isn’t on Marshall here, but rather the referees. How is this not pass interference? The defender is all over Marshall before the pass gets anywhere near him, pushing him in the back while holding his left arm onto Marshall. Marshall seems to suffer from Cam Newton syndrome because referees seem to ignore contact made against him by defenders because of his size. The NBA had a case of this with Shaq, but it’s persistent with Marshall on a weekly basis. On Petty’s part, it’s a good roll out and he places the ball where only Marshall can catch the pass. This should have been a penalty, otherwise it’s most likely caught. The only other interesting aspect of this throw is the design of the play, with Robby Anderson. When Anderson goes in motion, the safety on the other side moves up expecting him to come over to the side, but Anderson reverses course, which leaves the safety near the line of scrimmage. This reaction is a good bait by Gailey because he needs the safety to clear the area near Anderson. However, the play doesn’t quite materialize like the Jets would have hoped. The play is supposed to be a three tiered option with Marshall on the comeback route, Anderson on the crossing route, and Tomlinson on the short route. We’ve seen it numerous times in the past from Gailey, as he liked tiered options on roll outs (I believe there are good examples in last year’s Colts game film) but Anderson is slowed down in traffic in the middle, and Tomlinson just doesn’t get open. Petty’s only option is really Marshall so he makes a good read on the run, but the referees miss the penalty.
4)
The defense comes out in a single high safety look, and Petty audibles to a deep pass down the sideline. This is the exact pass the Dolphins were expecting on the earlier play we highlighted. In this case, Petty reads the defense right with the audible and has Marshall with an inside step. However, it lands incomplete with plenty of blame to go around. The first blame is on the Brian Winters because the Dolphins gifted the Jets a first down on this play. Suh jumps into the neutral zone right across from Winters, but he doesn’t budge at all. Considering the five yards would have gotten them another first down, it’s a bad play by Winters. You will see veteran offensive lines across the league get penalties because they will jump up as if they saw a ghost anytime a defender even comes close to jumping off sides. They get free yards in that sense, which the Jets rarely seem to do. Besides getting free yards, the other incentive is to control the defensive ends from timing the snap because they know that if they even flinch to hard, the offensive lineman will act to draw a penalty. If the offensive line doesn’t take advantage of this, the defense can try to guess the snap counts because they know they will get back before a penalty can be called. Part of it can be chalked up to inexperience on the line, but a major factor is the lack of fundamentals on the team. They rarely seem to do anything but the bare minimum, and refuse to take advantage of situations presented to them. The second failure of this play is on Petty, because he throws this pass to the outside shoulder of Brandon Marshall when he had inside position. Petty has to get better timing with Marshall because he is the team’s No. 1 receiver and this is just a bad throw. This is a bad throw by Petty, one he needs to correct, because the right throw would be to the inside shoulder of Marshall. The third culprit on this play is Marshall, who goes after this ball with one hands, and shows a lack of urgency. There is blame to go around on this one, with the biggest being Bryce Petty. However, an error by Winters and the lack of effort by Marshall causes it to end up here, although it could very well have been in “Petty Crimes” as well. This is the drive where the Jets failed to convert the first down, after the run by Powell was reversed, so the possible penalty would have really helped.
5)
The defense is in a two deep safety look in this two minute drill. The Dolphins are in a zone coverage scheme here, and Petty makes a great read here. The first thing Petty does on this play is hold the safety with his eyes, which is very advanced for his first few starts. Petty has a two read play on this, with Marshall being the first one, and then a short pass to Powell with some open space. Brandon Marshall finds a soft part in the zone, and Petty throws a great pass to him. Unfortunately, Marshall just flat out drops the pass. It looks like Marshall was thinking about running before he secured the pass, as he was looking to run towards the sideline. Petty shows very good skills by holding the safety with his eyes, and makes a good throw but Marshall just drops the pass.
6)
The defense is in a two safety look with man coverage across the board. Petty makes the correct pre-snap read because he sees Enunwa with a defender playing off with a seam route called, so Petty does a good job of recognizing the coverage and which player has the highest chance to be open. This is another play where Petty holds the safety to the right of the formation by looking right at him, before he turns towards Enunwa. He makes a good throw to Enunwa to his outside shoulder (mainly because there is a safety coming towards him from his inside shoulder) and replays showed that Enunwa just had this ball go through his hands. It seemed as if the ball arrived faster than Enunwa expected, as it passed through before Enunwa could close his hands. This is another great read by Petty, but a missed catch by Enunwa. This is not an easy catch by any stretch, but with tight coverage on this play, Enunwa has to make this play, as Petty threw the pass where it needed to be placed.
7)
The Dolphins are in a two tiered safety look here, with the Jets having two receivers, along with a TE on the line. The Jets have seven guys on the offensive line on this play, the Dolphins end up sending four guys. However, the defense gets pressure on Petty before he completes the play action, which is just an embarrassment. The play is meant to go to Robby Anderson who gets wide open playing against zone coverage, but Petty can’t finish his play action before he’s hit. As soon as he turns around for this pass, there is a guy in his face, and he does a good job of escaping his clutches, but makes a poor decision by throwing it to Powell well behind the line. Petty should have moved up in the pocket and tried to hit Anderson, but Petty isn’t sure if he’s about to be hit and decides to throw the ball to Powell, who loses about seven yards on this play. This is just a bad play by James Carpenter and Wesley Johnson, who let Earl Mitchell run right up the field and into Petty.
8)
The Jets are getting blown out at this point, so they are trying to put together a team. The Dolphins are in a two deep safety look, but Enunwa going in motion confuses the defense as there is a missing defender on Seferian-Jenkins. Petty does a good job recognizing the deficiency with the defense, and looks over immediately at Jenkins, who has a linebacker coming to his inside. Petty moves on quickly to an open Robby Anderson, who drops this pass. This play shows good field awareness with Petty as he sees the defense is confused and tries to take advantage. However, he moves on and sees Anderson open for the pass. This should have been caught by Robbie as the ball hits him right in the arms.
9)
This is a borderline play, and very well could be in “Petty Crimes” because the Dolphins bait Petty with this throw. The Dolphins show a single high safety look with press coverage on the right side, and they are banking on Petty going towards Marshall on this play. The defender is playing off Marshall indicating they are fearing a deep route, so Petty assumes this is going to be a much easier pass. Petty does a good job of holding the safety with his eyes, and then throws a laser to Marshall. The Dolphins did everything to bait Petty into this throw, but he gets it past the defender and it hits Marshall in the hands, but he can’t catch the pass. This is one of the biggest issues with Petty because he tends to get fooled by coverage every now and then, and the defenses are baiting him into some of these throws. This is a pass that could have been caught by Marshall, so this is a dual blame post. Great arm talent by Petty, but he took the bait from the Dolphins, and Marshall can’t catch it either.
1)
The defense is in a two deep safety look with defenders dropping back because there is eleven yards to the first down. Petty looks deep on this play towards Anderson but throws the pass to Powell, who gets some help from the offensive line. This is a good read by Petty because he has a quick read to the left of the formation if he has a deep route open, and then a screen pass set up for Powell. However, the biggest contributor to this play is Bilal Powell, who makes a great move in the open field to gain 22 yards. One of the benefits of having a good armed QB is the extra space for screen passes with the running backs, as Bilal Powell has been magnificent the last two games.
2)
Another play, another great effort from Bilal Powell. The Dolphins are again in a two deep safety look, and they are playing man coverage across the board. Petty hits Powell with a good pass, who makes a great move on the defender to turn up field and gain 18 yards. This was pretty much the play at the line of scrimmage, as Petty throws this pass to Powell quickly. Once again, Powell is the one that makes this play.
3)
Maybe this section should just be renamed to Powell’s Prowess. Once again, Bilal Powell stars in this play, as he takes a simple screen pass and runs up field for about eight yards. The Jets run Anderson on a WR sweep, which helps to draw the linebackers to the inside, allowing for a little bit more room for Powell to run through. However, the crux of this play is Powell running hard again and making the most of his opportunity. Petty does a good job of hitting Powell, but this is a pass most QBs not named Hackenberg can throw in their sleep.
4)
Guess who makes the play again? The defense is lined up in a two deep safety look for this critical third down play, and Bryce Petty finds Bilal Powell for 6 and a half yards, although it was initially ruled a first down. Petty does a great job of stepping up in the pocket and avoiding the pass rush, as well as finding a passing lane towards Powell. Once again, Powell does the hard work to get the yards, and comes up short by half a yard.
5)
Once again, Bilal Powell to the rescue. It’s a critical third down again, and the defense is in a two deep safety look. The Jets have Enunwa clear out the right side of the formation, and Bryce Petty hits Powell with the short pass with ample room to run. Powell makes a great move on the defender and turns up field for about 16 yards. This is yet another great play by Powell.
Bryce Petty got plenty of help from Bilal Powell in this game, as the RB took screen passes for long yardage. Notice that most of those screen plays happen in two deep safety looks. Defenses can’t allocate resources to the running game, the deep and intermediate passing game, and the screen pass game at the same time without risk of being exposed at some juncture. It doesn’t mean that every two deep safety look is susceptible to the screen pass, but the chances of it working out increase with one less defender in the box. Powell was excellent in this game, making open field moves, and fighting for more yardage. On the other hand, Petty’s receivers let down the young QB at times, with the biggest culprit being Brandon Marshall. It still seems as though Petty hasn’t quite developed the correct timing with Enunwa and Marshall.
Forum Questions:
A) Since Bowles actions seem to indicate Fitz/Forte was his best chance to win, how wrong do you think his line of thinking was?
B) Do you move on from Marshall or keep him? Please explain either choice.
Thank you for reading this article, and please be sure to check out the other breakdowns in our Film Room. Petty Crimes will be posted tomorrow.
