New York Jets: What Happened to Red-Zone "Savior," Plaxico Burress?

Just a few quotes from the preseason before we start:

"It’s going to be a long season for whatever defense comes out to play us,” Holmes said before the start of the season.

Really? Oh, and one of my favorites:

“I want this offense to go out and score as many points as we can. We have a great defense, we all know that. I’m challenging our offense to go out and score 28, 30 points a week. I believe that’s something we can do,” said no other than Mr. Red-Zone Savior, Plaxico Burress.

Twenty-eight to 30 points a week, huh Plax? That's funny.

The 3-3 New York Jets are coming off an ugly win against the hapless Miami Dolphins. Congratulations.

The Jets managed to score 17 points against one of the worst defenses in the NFL. The week before, in a loss to the Patriots, Mark Sanchez threw for only 166 yards against the Pats who are ranked 31st in pass defense.

The Jets offensive and red-zone struggles seemed to have carried over from last season. They were desperate to improve their red-zone offense that was ranked 30th in the league.

Quarterback Mark Sanchez completed just 47 percent of his passes inside the 20-yard line and an even more awful 26 percent inside the 10-yard line.

Enter Plaxico Burress, with his 6'5" height and big wingspan, to help solve the Jets' red-zone problems. A Pro Bowl receiver with an impressive career, and we signed him for only $3 million, what a steal.

What's not to get excited about?

But, as I mentioned in a previous article before the season started, adding Burress was not going to solve anything. The Jets' offensive struggles go beyond Plaxico, but that discussion is for another time.

Fourteen receptions for 218 yards and two touchdowns (with a few dropped passes) later, Plaxico has not looked like the red-zone security blanket that he was for Eli Manning.

After a promising start in a game back against the Dallas Cowboys, when he had four receptions for 72 yards and a touchdown, he has slowly been disappearing. Plaxico's last touchdown catch came in a Week 3 loss against the Oakland Raiders.

Burress has been out of sync with his quarterback Sanchez: Either he's running his routes too slow or there's miscommunication between them. Sanchez has targeted Plax 20 times on passes of 11-plus yards downfield and only eight were completed. Perhaps Plax was unable to get open in single coverage.

The Jets, six games into the season, have not seen much consistency from Burress, and head coach Rex Ryan now realizes that. "It just seems like we're missing just a little bit," Rex Ryan said after the win over Miami.

Rex says and believes there will be times when Plax will have 10 catches in a game.

More empty promises? For now, it looks like it is.

Burress does not look like the answer to the red-zone problems that fans and the Jets organization thought he would be.