Three on D: Clemons, Eguavoen, Sheffield

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:

See something you Mike?

Micheal Clemons had one of his most impactful games as a Jet on Thursday night as he posted a multiple sack game for the first time in his career to boost his sack total to 4.5 in nine games. He had just three sacks in 32 games entering the season.

Clemons, who has retained his starting role for now despite the arrival of Haason Reddick arguably also had the two most impressive sacks of his career, as a further sign of his development.

The first saw him show impressive power to bull rush Tytus Howard into the quarterback, forcing a key fumble in the first half.

On the other, he got a rare interior rep in the "JFM role" as the Jets lined up in their familiar isolation set to ensure Reddick got a one-on-one. Clemons swatted the left guard aside and showed impressive closing speed to run down Stroud as he tried to escape.

Clemons is registering pressure at a similar rate now he's had an increased workload. He has 20 total pressures in 198 pass rush attempts this year having had 21 in 202 over his first two seasons.

He's not out there to make impact plays though - more just to play a functional role while the star quality players around him get to work. So anything they do get from him in that regard is a bonus.

What he needs to do, however, is avoid negative plays. He had one missed tackle (only his second of the year) and was sealed inside a few times in the running game. He was in on one run stuff though.

Clemons' attempts to move inside permanently were ill-advised and he looks in better condition than he ever has on the edge, so hopefully he can keep developing there. However, he needs to bring the kind of consistency that John Franklin-Myers did within the same role.

Don't put all your Eguavoens in one basket

With CJ Mosley still out and Chazz Surratt missing most of the practice time during the week, the Jets opted to put Sam Eguavoen into the starting lineup.

While the Jets didn't play in the base package very often, Eguavoen was still out there for 20 snaps which is more than his total defensive snap count in his previous 23 games as a Jet combined.

Eguavoen didn't really let the Jets down as he avoided any serious negatives against the run and wasn't targeted in coverage. (He actually only had to cover on four plays anyway, one of which saw him hustle across the field to make a tackle on a Stroud scramble). The linebackers as a group, though, continue to be a beat slow in filling lanes at times.

There were some positive contributions from Eguavoen, who made three tackles including this run stop.

However, his best play was probably this one where he took on a blocker aggressively to help stretch out a run so that his teammate could make the play in the backfield.

Eguavoen was released in final cuts last year but ended up playing in 15 games and the same kind of thing has happened this year. He remains a valuable special teamer that ideally the Jets wouldn't have in the defensive rotation but, based on this game, they don't lose too much by putting him in over a guy like Surratt.

Sheffield Thursday

It may be surprising to see Kendall Sheffield active from the practice squad while two main roster guys who had good preseasons in Qwan'tez Stiggers and Jarrick Bernard-Converse can't seem to get any reps despite being healthy.

However, Sheffield is a player who Jeff Ulbrich has a history with so there's obviously some level of trust there.

In Thursday night's game, Sheffield was in the game for 32 plays and did not give up a catch in four targets. He also was in on this run stuff.

That perhaps doesn't tell the full story with Sheffield though. Two of those four targets saw him beaten by a couple of steps but the first one saw the ball go off Tank Dell's hands for an incompletion and the other saw Dalton Schultz make a big catch but fail to get both feet inbounds.

Sheffield is a good special teamer so any excuse to get him in the lineup benefits the Jets in that phase. However, he's already used two of his three practice squad elevations so the Jets may have a decision to make at some point soon.

As long as Deuce Carter keeps missing time due to various ailments, the Jets will probably want Sheffield available as cover, so they may look to find a way to get him on the 53 soon.

Three-on-O will follow tomorrow.