After each game, we’ll be highlighting three defensive and three offensive players and looking in detail at their performance. We’ll start today with the defense:
Micheal Calamitous
Due to the Jermaine Johnson injury and unexpected Haason Reddick holdout, Micheal Clemons has taken on a bigger role so far this season.
He has 10 tackles, 2.5 sacks, four quarterback hits and two tackles for loss in six games, so he’s been making some contributions, but clearly the Jets would prefer for him to be a rotational contributor instead of being just six behind Will McDonald for the most edge snaps on the team.
Clemons had a costly error on Monday which allowed Josh Allen to pick up the first down and essentially won the Bills the game by running out the clock. His role is to stay at home on the backside and clean up if Allen keeps it and goes the other way.
This is a clear example of a tendency breaker. As you can see from Tony Adams’ reaction, he points like he knows what’s coming and the Bills obviously had success with the toss play going right earlier in the game and the Jets needed to stop it to get the ball back. Had Adams also stayed home then maybe Clemons could have forced Allen wide enough for Adams to make the play.
As noted, Clemons is making some contributions out there. He had two good run stuffs, one as he crashed inside and the other as he stayed at home on the edge and came off a block. He also had a pressure and a quarterback hit, although the latter didn’t count due to a penalty and both were late in the play. He did also have a missed tackle.
Clemons has a key role and is a solid rotational player but it was never the plan for him to start and the Jets edge depth has obviously suffered because of what happened with Johnson and Reddick.
Ash and Burn
After a solid 2023 season, Ashtyn Davis found himself back as the third safety following Chuck Clark’s return and insertion into the starting line-up. So far, that had translated to a reduction in playing time as he had only played 22 snaps since week one.
In this game, Davis was called into action for a full-time role as Chuck Clark injured his ankle. He’ll likely remain there for a month or so, too, because Clark went right onto injured reserve.
Early on, Davis had some lapses that suggested he had regressed into some old habit. He missed a tackle and, just after getting beaten for a possible touchdown only for the receiver not to make the catch, he lost his balance at the line and was easily beaten for an actual score this time.
To his credit, Davis settled down after this. He ended up with nine tackles, four of which were within five yards of the line of scrimmage. His best plays were a good open field tackle in space and this run stuff.
Hopefully, how Davis played after his early mistakes is more indicative of what we can expect from him over the next month or so. The Jets need him to perform well as a starter if they’re to get back into the playoff mix.
They think it’s Oliver
Isaiah Oliver remains in the nickel back role with Deuce Carter out and once again held up pretty well. It is interesting that with how well the cornerbacks all played in preseason, they opted to put a guy who spent the offseason at safety there instead but at least it’s working out.
After also having played well against Minnesota, Oliver held up again here as he didn’t give up any first downs. He made a good tackle in the flat to set up 3rd-and-short on one target and another was stopped for a short gain.
Oliver’s best play was this disruption in the end zone which forced the Bills to settle for a field goal at the end of the game and gave the Jets a great chance to tie or win the game on their next drive.
He did, however, get blocked out of a couple of runs and had one missed tackle. Run defense is an underappreciated area of Carter’s game so Oliver may be a downgrade there despite his experience at safety.
When Carter will return remains to be seen, but even if he plays the next game, Oliver has played well enough to be a consideration for almost any position in the secondary, which with Clark also getting hurt, could mean he stays in the rotation.
Three-on-O will follow tomorrow.