Rex Ryan, a known players coach, must be feeling the heat from his piping hot seat, because he verbally unloaded on his butter-fingered wide receivers in the media today.
"That's your job, and certainly we know we have to do a better job, but I expect it to happen immediately and it never happened yesterday, either," Ryan said. "We'll have to try to fix that one way or the other. If that's with other players, so be it. If that's guys stepping up and focusing and concentrating more on doing something that should be natural to them, that's a possibility also."
Stephen Hill has developed bad reputation for dropping passes, an issue that cancels out his superior size and speed. He let five catchable balls hit the turf last season in 12 games, meaning he was dropping nearly a pass per game in an offense that didn't throw nearly as much as other teams.
With much about the Jets' offense uncertain, including who will be the quarterback and what the running back rotation will be, the Jets can ill-afford dropped passes when they do get plays to run the right way.
"It has to get better. The fact that I've told everybody about it, is it putting pressure on them? Well, the NFL is a pressure game, you should catch the football," Ryan said. To me, if you're a receiver, it's hard to expect to make a football team or have a huge contribution if you can't catch the football or you're not consistently catching the football."
Right now the Jets prime pass-catchers are Hill, Jeremy Kerley and tight end Jeff Cumberland. Their No. 1 wideout, Santonio Holmes, sustained a Lisfranc injury early last season and has undergone two surgeries. He's still not back yet, and may start the season on the Physically Unable to Perform (PUP) list, which would keep him out until after Week 6.
"We need Santonio Holmes. I don't think there's any doubt," Ryan said. "[He's] a tremendous football player. First year we had him he won like four games in critical times. He's an MVP of a Super Bowl, making clutch catches, and probably no bigger time than that.
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