Where did it all go long? (Part One)

One major feature of the Jets defense in 2016 was their propensity to give up big plays. Especially early in the season, there were momentum changing pass plays seemingly every week and these contributed heavily to the Jets' disappointing season.

In part one today we're going to consider how many big plays the Jets gave up and place that in context by comparing it with previous years and other teams. We'll also consider when they gave up big plays and analyze how costly they were.

In part two tomorrow, we're going to look at each of them in turn and try and assess who was at fault. While a defender was usually beaten on a downfield throw, was there also any communication issue in the secondary, was the safety unable to get across to support in time and did the pass rush fail to generate pressure fast enough?

2016 big play numbers

Officially the NFL has the Jets down as giving up 13 plays of 40+ yards in the passing game last year. This is actually wrong because it was 14 but let's hope that the rest of their numbers are accurate.

Assuming that's the case, the Jets total surprising falls behind two other teams - the Raiders and the Bucs with 16 each.

Despite the Raiders being at the top, any notion that giving up a lot of big plays might be beneficial because it keeps your defense off the field can easily be dispelled by noting that the Giants were the only other team in the top nine to make the postseason.

The Jets also gave up two running plays for over 40 yards, although we're going to focus mostly on the passing game in this study.

For more context, the Jets totals in the past few years were 11 (in 2015, tied for 17th most in the NFL), 14 (in 2014) and 15 (in 2013). So, actually they weren't really any worse than they had been in recent times anyway. However, in the five years prior to that, with Darrelle Revis as their number one corner, they averaged just 5.2 per season, including just four as recently as 2012.

Why does it seem like they were worse than that?

Is it just a grass-is-greener mentality that leads us to perceive the Jets as being so bad at giving up big plays when they weren't even the worst in the league and not that different from a few recent seasons?

Not necessarily. There are a few very good reasons why we might have good reason to view this as a big problem, even if the numbers undersell it.

First of all, where you talk about 40+ yard gains, you might have a couple of 45-yard pass plays that still end up with the team settling for a field goal or whatever. This would be a whole lot less damaging than, say, a 70-yard touchdown. In fact, you could theoretically have two 40+ yard gains on a drive and come up empty.

With the Jets, there tended to be a lot of bigger plays and a lot of touchdowns - or plays which keyed drives that ended up in touchdowns. Of the 16 40+ yard plays they gave up, 10 were actually more than 50 yards and seven of those 10 went for touchdowns. Five went for more than 60 and three went for more than 70.

Contrast that with the Jets offense, who had just 10 total plays of 40+ yards. Five of those, three by Robby Anderson, went for exactly 40 yards, so the Jets were a few unfavorable spots away from only having five plays in this category. Also, only one went for more than 60 yards, Quincy Enunwa's 69-yard touchdown against the Ravens.

Another reason why it seems worse than it was is because this was a major issue earlier on in the season but it was cleaned up later on. Of course, by then, the season was essentially doomed anyway, so it ceased to matter as much. Also, this may have required them to make sacrifices that otherwise negatively impacted the pass rush or the run defense.

Just how bad was it early in the season? They gave up eight 40+ yard plays in the first four weeks alone. That rate put them on course to double the Raiders and Bucs totals for the year. They followed that up by giving up a 72-yard touchdown in week five, but then managed to only give up two more 40+ yard plays in the passing game between weeks five and 15 to really slow things down.

In fact, in the five games from week eight to week 13, they gave up just one 40+ yard play. However, in the first of those five games, they gave up three 30+ yard plays and in the second one, they gave up a long touchdown on a kick-off return instead.

Nevertheless, with only four 40+ yard pass plays in the last nine games, they would have been in the top half of the league in that category over that span. Only 10 teams gave up fewer than eight all year, including the Patriots, Falcons, Cowboys and Chiefs (also known as the four teams with first round byes in last year's playoffs).

When did the big plays happen

Most of the big plays tended to take place early in games, which may suggest that a lack of focus was a contributory factor in a good proportion of them. It also suggests that adjustments were made so that such plays didn't take place later on and perhaps that speaks to how well the team was prepared to execute the original gameplan. Then again, it could be that there were plenty of games that weren't close so opposing offenses weren't compelled to look for big plays later on.

Of the 16 40+ yard plays, 11 took place in the first half and six in the first quarter. It's worth noting, however, that two of those six first quarter big plays were running plays.

Until the last game, none of the big plays had come in the fourth quarter. So, while you could say that there were a lot of big plays that swung the momentum, none were directly responsible for deciding a game.

Also interesting in terms of when these big plays happened is which games they took place in. If the Jets can get back towards the middle of the pack in terms of these big plays, then that would be several fewer big plays to endure next year. If they're all taking place in blowouts anyway, then maybe it wouldn't have a big influence on their record. However, if they're taking place in close games then you might be able to claim that this issue directly cost the team a few wins.

Sure enough, there were three such plays in the 23-22 opening day loss (which also featured a couple of missed kicks) and one in the 9-6 loss to the Rams in week 10. So maybe if this issue had been resolved sooner, they win a couple more games.

The rest tended to be in comfortable losses, but as already noted, many of these plays changed the momentum and may have caused the team to collapse and lose heavily in a game they otherwise had been contesting closely.

Come back tomorrow for a breakdown of each of the 14 40+ yard plays the Jets gave up in the passing game last year as we try to apportion the blame and consider whether any of the moves made since the middle of last season will help in this area.