New York Jets: Todd Bowles says week one mistakes are minor

Todd Bowles believes that the New York Jets defensive mistakes against the Bills were minor.

The New York Jets have had more than 24 hours to recover from the opening loss to the Bills. They made a lot of mistakes on both sides of the ball, as most of us expected. They were in the game but couldn’t make enough plays to get over the top. What made it more disappointing was the fact that it was winnable.

Be that as it may, Monday is the day that the coaching staff reviews the tape before today’s day off. The teams get back to work at practice on Wednesday to prepare of the next game. Todd Bowles reviewed the game and spoke to the media yesterday. Being a defensive minded coach, the reporters were interested in what he thought on defense. He felt the team could make the corrections quickly. Here is why (per team press release):

"They’re minor. They can be corrected. They’re self-inflicted. We’ll just go back, everybody watched the film and we understand what we did wrong. We’ll just go back to the drawing board and work on it. We’ll have it fixed by Sunday."

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It’s great to see Bowles have that kind of confidence. He knows defense and believes in his guys. That is the sign of a coach that players can believe in. But the fact is a lot will depend upon the offense. They have to keep the defense off of the field longer. They are going to get tired out each week otherwise.

The concerns with the offense are not minor.

He also addressed how they need to go about opening up more lanes for the running attack:

"We have to loosen them up in the pass game some, as well, but we have to find different ways to try to run the ball and loosen them up and not have many guys down there."

Running the ball differently isn’t going to be very effective when the box is already stacked. The passing game is going to have to open things up. For that to work out, it’s going to have to connect on some intermediate and deep routes. Otherwise the defense will sit on the short routes and nothing will help the running game.

Next: If you want tank, don't worry about coaching gaffes with the Jets

Whether the Jets are tanking or not, they will have the chance to win football games in 2017. It’s going to take improvement on both sides of the football. But the offense has to help the defense. It cannot be one-sided or it will not get any better.