New York Jets Must Minimize Mistakes to Reach Full Potential in 2015

Seventeen penalties. 

The New York Jets may have accomplished some positive things in their 30-22 preseason victory over the Atlanta Falcons, but those 17 penalties lord over the team like a bag of bricks hanging on by a thread, waiting to do irreparable harm to the Jets' playoffs dreams.

That is, unless they are addressed before that thread snaps.

"You aren't going to win ball games having 17 penalties," head coach Todd Bowles said after the victory. "The effort was great, penalties were terrible. That was way more than I imagined. We got better in some areas. We got worse there, we've got to clean that up."

The Jets were penalized 17 times for 125 yards against the Falcons. For the sake of comparison, the Seattle Seahawks were the league's most penalized team in 2014 with 151 total penalties in their 19 games (7.9 penalties per game), according to NFLPenalties.com. The Buffalo Bills were penalized 124 times in their 16-game season (7.8 penalties per game). 

It's only preseason, and some of those penalties were committed by people who won't be on the team when the Jets roster is cut down to 53 players. But this isn't about specific players; this is about sending a message to a team in transition, a team that hopes to rise up from the doldrums of sub-.500 seasons to one that can compete in meaningful games in the near future.

At least these mistakes are happening in a time when the Jets can work on correcting them, and in a time when they don't have any consequence on the Jets' playoff hopes. At least now, the Jets can practice good habits in an effort to eliminate penalties.

"I told the referees to call anything if the wind blows so we were trying to emphasize penalties," Bowles said after practice Sunday. "Some of it was exaggerated, but we have to get a point across for the penalties."

It would be one thing if penalties were the only mistakes that were taking place. 

Credit: NFL Game Rewind

Unfortunately, a pair of blown coverage assignments were also a big part of the Falcons' success moving the ball down the field and scoring in the opening quarter against the starting defense.

The Falcons' first pass play was a 60-yard catch-and-run by fullback Collin Mooney. Linebacker Quinton Coples was in coverage in the flat and nearly got his hand on the ball to break up the pass, but there was no one behind Coples to make a tackle. Take nothing away from Mooney, but there is no reason there shouldn't be someone available to bring him down before breaking 20 yards downfield. Sixty is unacceptable. 

"We busted a coverage the first play that got them down there," Bowles said. "Other than that, I thought they got going a little bit. They got the ball on the three and I thought they should have kept them out of there. We got them to third down but one big play they got the fullback and we busted the coverage."

That wasn't the only miscommunication, though.

Credit: NFL Game Rewind

Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan found wide receiver Leonard Hankerson on a slant route on 3rd-and-goal from the 2-yard line. There were three defenders in the vicinity to make a play, but none of them were even within three yards of Hankerson when the ball was released. The only one who was close enough, cornerback Darrelle Revis, was turning to run the other way with his man.

Clearly, something got mixed up. But this is the time to clean up those kinds of mistakes.

"That's what preseason is for," Bowles added. "You don't want them. You can learn from them. Hopefully, we learn from this one. We learned something last week about tackling. Hopefully, we'll learn from penalties this week. We have to get better every week. We have to progress next week. Hopefully the penalties go down next week. We're going to work our butts off on it and go from there."

Fortunately, these are all correctable issues.

Unfortunately, if those penalties and defensive miscommunications aren't cleaned up, and fast, the Jets may not realize their full potential in 2015. 

Unless otherwise noted, all quotes obtained via team news release.