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Calling down from the booth, Jetfighter from SB Nation's New York Jets blog, NY Landing Strip.
tommasse: The Jets were 25th in overall offense (yardage), but 18th in scoring. They were also 20th in overall defense, but an amazing 6th in scoring. Both are dramatic improvements in scoring over yards and probably why New York made the playoffs. Is this "overachieving" or by design?
Jetfighter: This is definitely overachieving by the Jets teams. This team was very basic and put together with not very much plans. Eric Mangini was just starting off his program and not tweaking it very much. I felt that actually the Jets are really still not that good, and they were a product of their redunkulous easy schedule. That is why the numbers are so skewed, the teams that the Jets played who were good made it hard for the Jets to do anything positive, but when they played a bad team, they blew the door off the hinges.
The Pats, Colts, Bears, Bills, Browns, and Jags losses jumbled up all the numbers very bad, including the 41-0 shutout by the Jaguars. Again the overachieving is caused more by the ratio of bad teams with huge yards and points to good teams with low yards and low or no points. This is overachieving and not team design more than anything else.
tommasse's retort: No doubt, the Jets had a cake schedule last season, and they ended up in the playoffs in part because of it. But the bend-don't-break defense is definitely by design, and defense was (and is) Mangini's emphasis. The offense may have overachieved, but only if you assume that Chad Pennington would be the struggling Pennington of the couple previous years, and not the revitalized one who played in 2006. Otherwise, with a tougher schedule this year, there would be fewer "experts" picking an overachieving team in their top 10s for 2007.
OK, it's your turn. Step up to the Pulpit and say your piece. And if you have a question you want me to ask next week, email me, and I'll pose the best queries to our friends at Buffalo Rumblings, The Phinsider and NY Landing Strip.