Three on D: Gardner, Taylor, Watts

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:

They shoot Sauces, don't they?

A major topic of conversation over the past few weeks has been the disappointing play of Sauce Gardner - at least relative to the expectations he set with two all-pro seasons to start off his career.

In addition to his struggles as a tackler, Gardner's on-ball production has been way down. He has just four passes defensed after having had 20 as a rookie and 11 last year. It's also now 35 games since his last interception.

Gardner had already given up more yards in coverage than last season and this game was only the second all season that has seen him give up over 50 yards. (The other was against Calvin Ridley in the win over Tennessee).

The Colts were very selective about how they targeted Gardner but they picked their spots well. He gave up the majority of his yardage on this play which saw him unable to recover as he had to navigate traffic on a crossing route and then failed with a desperation tackle attempt.

Gardner also gave up 19 to his college teammate Alec Pierce on another crossing route, as again he was unable to recover after a clean release gave his man a step on him.

Otherwise, the only time he was targeted was on a short pass as he was playing off his man. (The late deep ball where he seemed to pass his man off to Jalen Mills appeared not to be Gardner's fault).

Teams still aren't getting much success out of throwing it to Gardner's side but clearly these crossing routes are something that he can be vulnerable on. And while he's not giving up much, if they're relying on him to lock down one side of the field and also make some plays on the ball then he clearly hasn't lived up to that.

It wasn't all negative from Gardner, who was credited with four tackles. As someone whose tackling has been criticized, this was a sensational play that potentially saved a touchdown.

Next year will be a huge season from Gardner who began his career on a potential hall-of-famer trajectory but has fallen short of pro bowl level play this year and will have a difficult contract negotiation ahead of him.

It will be interesting to see how the coaching staff uses him next year and how this affects his play.

Bonnie Taylor

One bright spot for the Jets has to be defensive tackle Leonard Taylor. The undrafted rookie has gone from healthy scratch to a useful contributor off the bench and based on the way he's playing the Jets may opt to keep him in the rotation once Leki Fotu returns, and kick Solomon Thomas back to the edge where he had done well.

Sunday's game saw excellent production from Taylor who had two tackles for loss, batted a pass down at the line of scrimmage and blew past the left guard from an interior pressure. Not bad...especially since he only played 10 snaps.

Let's take a look at a couple of his best plays.

On this one, Taylor displays his quickness as he shoots a gap, but crucially also manages to get a handful of Jonathan Taylor's jersey and get him to the ground. Had he not done that, Taylor might have cut back for a nice gain.

This play sees him take on the center's reach block, fighting it off so the center can't get to his outside shoulder and then hustling downhill to get in front of the runner but also doing well to slow up rather than overrun the play and get sealed off for a possible cutback.

Taylor looks like a player who will definitely be worth keeping around next year to give him a chance to earn a bigger role. Could he even start alongside Quinnen Williams within a year or two?

Watts the big deal?

While he's made a quieter impact, another undrafted rookie - defensive end Eric Watts - is also starting to showcase his potential.

Watts received plenty of hype in training camp but was underwhelming in preseason with fellow undrafted rookie Braiden McGregor seemingly making much more of an impact. At the start of the season, both were getting reps due to Jermaine Johnson and Haason Reddick not being available and it seemed like McGregor was initially ahead of him but Watts soon overtook him despite it being unclear what he'd done to deserve that opportunity.

He's starting to show that now. Watts is clearly holding up pretty well against the run and was impressive in an active performance on Sunday.

Watts was credited with three tackles and a pressure in 21 snaps, which was perhaps more than they planned for him to have but they must have changed the plan based on the combination of Reddick missing some time with an ankle injury and how well Watts did.

Here was one of his better plays against the run as he crashed down to make the stop on Taylor for a short gain.

He had another where he fought off a block to make a stop for a four yard gain and also set the edge really impressively on a few plays, including the one above where Taylor made the stop near the goal line. He also shows good hustle in pursuit.

Although he was only credited with the three tackles, he was in on at least three others and his only real negative was a missed tackle at the second level where Gardner immediately tackled the runner anyway so no damage was done.

As noted, Watts finally recorded his first pressure of the season, so clearly the pass rush is somewhere he needs to develop. That pressure came on this play where he stunted and drove the center back into the quarterback's lap.

Seeing Watts so active and constantly around the ball, as well as moving his blocker on occasion, is a jarring change from earlier in the year when he never looked like making any kind on impact other than neutralizing his blocker at best.

As with Taylor, it looks like Watts has a future as a rotational contributor and perhaps more. Hopefully he can build on this game down the stretch.

Three-on-O will follow tomorrow.