Bart Scott's not worried about the Jets' impotent offense. (US Presswire) |
Jets linebacker Bart Scott has never been one to keep his thoughts to himself (this awesomeness immediately comes to mind). So it's hardly surprising that he's willing to speak out about the circus that is Mark Sanchez, Tim Tebow and the inept New York offense. (How bad were they in the preseason? Consider this from Yahoo.com's Doug Farrar: "New York Jets: 22 sacks allowed, one touchdown. Yeah, a Wildcat package will fix all that.")
What is surprising, however, is that Scott isn't on his soapbox sermonizing about this team's plight.
“I’m wasting absolutely zero percent of my brain matter on worrying about what the hell the offense is doing,” Scott told Manish Mehta of the New York Daily News. “I couldn’t give two you-know-whats.”
Scott has some experience with blocking out the travails of a struggling offense and focusing only on what he can control. Before following coach Rex Ryan to the Jets, Scott played for the Ravens, an outfit once known as much for its menacing defense as its punchless offense. And those teams did pretty well.
“If you want to be an elite defense, you put points on the board,” Scott continued. “If the offense isn’t No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, No. 4, that doesn’t mean we can’t win. If we’re elite, we can set them up in great field position and create turnovers.”
The problem: the Jets' offense scored one (!) touchdown during the preseason and that was with third-team quarterback Greg McElroy. Unless this defense plans on putting up at least 10 points a game, this could make for a long season. (Of course, there's always the possibility that Jets defenders actually play on offense, too. After all, cornerback Antonio Cromartie is the second-best wide receiver on the team.)
Meanwhile, defensive coordinator Mike Pettine shares Scott's mindset about all this.
“You get to the point where you’re a little bit helpless,” Pettine said. “But at the same time, until we play a perfect game (on defense), we have no room (to criticize). Sure, we get frustrated by it, but we have to bat 1.000. … There were times when the offense went three-and-out (in the past) and our guys were like, ‘You know what? More TV time for us.’ ”
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