Jets-Chargers Aftermath

As predicted here, the Chargers blew out the NY Bretts last night on MNF. Here are my takeaways of what we learned from the game.

> The bloom is coming off the Favre rose pretty quickly, really. San Diego had three picks last night (two of them from the Sainted One), and could have had a couple more. The thing about Favre's picks is that they really don't all come from the man trying to force things or going for big plays; he throws picks of every variety, really, which is something you have to do if you are going to throw more of them than any other QB that has ever played.

In the first quarter, with the game in the balance, Thomas Jones comes out in the flat, then turns the pattern upfield. Favre throws five yards behind him, and Antonio Cromartie makes a great break on the ball but can't make the catch. It's an easy pick-six if he brings it in, but it goes in the scorebooks as just an incompletion.

Now, if a rookie QB makes that play, it's part of the learning curve. If Tarvaris Jackson or Rex Grossman makes that play, it's grounds for benching. Brett Favre? It's part of the whole package, baby. One question: why?

Either he doesn't know the playbook -- at which point, um, you can and should take him to task for being unprepared and/or moronic -- or he simply made a glaring physical or mental mistake. Or, and this is really the crux of the biscuit, maybe he's just not very accurate anymore, even in the short game, which is where most of his passing happens now.

The Jones ball wasn't even a pick, but it was just awful on every level. The MNF guys all took the opportunity to polish Cromartie's knob, and he is a pretty great young corner, albeit a big gambler. But what they missed is the biggest reason why, if Brett Favre is the quarterback of a team that you care a lot about, you better have a lot of other good things going on with your team.

> San Diego might still win the West -- eventually, Jay Cutler and Brandon Marshall have to stop being Brady to Moss, don't they? -- but I don't see the window of opportunity looking very wide for this team any more.

Without Shawne Merriman, they don't get enough push (even when the game was close and the Jets had abandoned the run) on defense, and the secondary, while good, isn't great -- Jammer is reliable but not a shutdown guy, Cromartie will bite on pump fakes and take bad lines, and the safetys don't do enough.

But the most telling point about the Chargers is the coverage teams. Kickoff and punt coverage is an early indicator of a team's talent pool. If your team is covering these well (without using starters), it means that the back-ups are athletic and have the building blocks in place to be productive players. When they don't cover, it means that the tail end of your roster is being staffed by reaches and draft busts who have the gig because they couldn't find anyone better.

Now, the Jets do have outstanding kick returners. Leon Washington is among the top five in the NFL at it, and they had Jerricho Cotchery bust a big one when Washington was gassed in the fourth. The Chargers also were kicking off all night, thanks to the porous Jets secondary and a good night for QB Phillip Rivers. But the Chargers threw in the towel on it at one point (squib kicks, pooch kicking), and that was with a kicker (Nate Kaeding) who usually is good for putting some distance into his kickoffs.

Since the Chargers have the very dangerous Darren Sproles returning kicks, and Kaeding and Scifres doing good work with their own feet, there are very good individual performers on the Charger special teams. No one is going to think that they will lose because of them. But I'm here to tell you, it ain't necessarily so. I've watched enough Eagle Football under the Reid Era to know... if your coverage teams are costing you yards every game, that eventually comes back to haunt you.

> In the fourth quarter, with the game officially into Pump Your Stats Mode (and who says that real football doesn't care about fantasy?), the Jets went into a spread offense with no RB at all (so much for that canny pick of Thomas Jones on my part in too many leagues) and moved the ball. Given the situation of the game and their need to get Saint Brett up to speed with the offense somehow, this made all the sense in the world, and if the Jet defense had shown up at all, they might have found themselves in a game late.

But in going for two down two scores, the spread went from useful to downright silly. After three consecutive Charger penalties on pass plays, the ball was at the half-yard line. The play call then wasn't a plunge into the line, an inside draw handoff, or even a simple Favre sneak. Instead, it was another pass, this one incomplete. Was head coach Eric Mangini still paying attention, or does he not trust his team -- with a physical offensive line that they spent big bucks on (Alan Faneca, Damien Woody) -- to not get a half yard?

> I don't watch college football, so maybe I'm missing something here. Three games into a pro career is hardly the time to break out the fork.

But, um, Jets fan? If this guy in the Vernon Gholston jersey is a football player, I'm an airplane. And that was after he got his very first professional tackle (yay! in only his third game!) and recovered a fumble. Let's just say that your video montage of draft pain just got a little longer...

> I realize this last point is blasphemy, but if I was a Jets fan last night, I was more scared -- and well, you can add much before that -- when Sproles had the ball in his hands, not Tomlinson.

Maybe LdT is still coming back from injury and rust, and maybe Sproles is never going to be a guy you can give the ball to 20-25 times a game, considering that he's all of three inches taller than me. But he's got a burst that the reputed #1 RB in all of football just doesn't have any more.

Having said that, I'd still give you Thomas Jones for him in trade. Quickly.