John Butchko

Early in Sunday’s loss to the Minnesota Vikings, Jets linebacker Brandon Copeland registered a sack on Kirk Cousins near the Minnesota goal line. The officials spotted the ball at the one yard line. The initial view left some degree of ambiguity about whether Cousins actually was tackled in the end zone for what would have been a safety. Todd Bowles chose not to challenge the call on the field that Cousins was down at the one yard line. The Jets head coach explained that decision during his postgame press conference. On not challenging on the potential safety in the first...

The Jets fell to 3-4 yesterday as they lost to the Minnesota Vikings at MetLife Stadium. The final score was 37-17. The defeat ended New York’s two game winning streak and prevented the team from sweeping a three game homestand. The Jets will now look to recover on the road next week against another NFC North opponent, the Chicago Bears. On today’s podcast we recap this defeat for the Jets. How much does this loss matter in the grand scheme of things? How troubled should Jets fans be? How much did the elements have to do with it? Who played well? Who didn’t? We will touch on all of...

The Jets’ two game winning streak came to an end today as New York fell to the Minnesota Vikings 37-17 at MetLife Stadium. This dropped the team’s record to 3-4. Let’s talk about what went wrong. The Bad Sam Darnold: Darnold certainly wasn’t helped by his receiving corps in this game. There were some drops in key moments. You can also pin some of his poor performance on the weather. The wind was a big factor in this game, and it impacted almost every aspect of it. Darnold’s counterpart, Kirk Cousins, certainly was having trouble with it. Perhaps the wind contributed to how far off...

This is an interesting NFL week on TV. FOX has one game for each region. CBS is showing three games, including a London game to most of the nation. New York is an exception. The Jets play in the early afternoon at home on FOX. NFL rules do not allow another game to be televised at the same time as a local team’s home game so there is no CBS game in the early timeslot. Got that? Good. If you live in the New York area, you will see: Titans vs. Chargers at 9:30 in the morning on CBS Vikings at Jets in the early afternoon on FOX Cowboys at Redskins in the late afternoon on...

Robby Anderson’s second season in the NFL was a success. It is always encouraging to see the production of a young player trend up. Anderson’s reception total went up from 42 as a rookie in 2016 to 63 in his second season. His receiving yardage jumped from 587 in 2016 to 941 in 2017. And after only catching 2 touchdown passes as a rookie, he hauled in 7 during his second season. This raised expectations quite a bit coming into year three. If Anderson’s upward trajectory continued, he could emerge as a legitimate go to guy, perhaps even as one the top receivers in the entire...

The Jets will release wide receiver Terrelle Pryor as reported by ESPN’s Adam Schefter. Jets are releasing WR Terrelle Pryor today, per league source. Pryor has a tear in his groin and is expected to be out about two weeks. Jets interested in bringing him back when healthy, but other teams also likely to be interested.— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) October 20, 2018 Not that I am one to doubt Schefter, but it certainly does feel like there’s more to the story here. Players with $4.5 million contracts tend to not be released when they get hurt. They are inactive on gameday until...

This week the Jets will face the Minnesota Vikings, led by head coach Mike Zimmer. Zimmer’s play calling frequently reaps the benefits of blitzes without actually blitzing. Sometimes simulated pressure is as good as or even better than the real thing. Let’s take a look at a third down play from Minnesota’s game last week against Arizona to demonstrate. On this play, the Vikings have two linebackers (orange) showing blitz presnap in addition to three defensive linemen. We can guess the three defensive linemen are going to rush the passer. Now with the two linebackers...

Welcome to SB Nation FanPulse — a survey of fans across the NFL, powered by SurveyMonkey. Each week, we send 32 polls to 100+ plugged in fans from each team. Jets fans, sign up HERE to join FanPulse. This week’s FanPulse numbers are out. Fans from across the league were asked whether they would most want to build their team for the next decade around Carson Wentz, Deshaun Watson, Jared Goff, or Patrick Mahomes. Mahomes was the winner, especially in the Jets fanbase. 58% of Jets fans went for Mahomes. 27% went for Wentz. 14% went for Goff. None went for Watson. (Something tells me Watson...

The Jets close out their three game homestand this Sunday against the Minnesota Vikings. Two weeks ago things looked bleak for the Jets as they stood at 1-3. Their 2018 season seemed to be in deep trouble. A two game winning streak has helped to stabilize things. With a victory over Minnesota, the Jets will be back over the .500 mark for the first time since Week 1. Even a loss wouldn’t be the end of the world, though. The main objective of this homestand was just to get the season back on track. The team has done that with victories over the Broncos and the Colts. On today’s podcast...

It is Thursday, which means it is mailbag day on our podcast. Thanks to those of you who submitted questions for the show. Fortunately and unfortunately there were far too many questions submitted for me to be able to answer all of them. Apologies if your question was unanswered. Feel free to ask it again in a future podcast. On this week’s mailbag, we look at whether it will be easier for the Jets to work around their offensive line situation or their cornerback situation, how the offensive line has looked so far, whether the Jets will look internally or outside the organization for...

During Sunday’s victory over the Colts, the CBS broadcast crew noted Sam Darnold had really taken command of the Jets offense over the last two weeks. At least that what the coaching staff was saying. After an excellent performance against the Colts, it certainly seems like a fair assessment. A couple of plays stand out that display Darnold’s increasing confidence and comfort level. First let’s look at Darnold’s 24 yard completion to Chris Herndon. Specifically, take a look at where Herndon is relative to Colts safety Malik Hooker as Darnold is throwing the ball. Nothing about the...

Let’s take a look at playing time figures for Week 6. On the offensive side of the ball, a number of wide receivers saw their playing time tick up considerably. Robby Anderson, Jermaine Kearse, and Terrelle Pryor were all in for over 60% of Jets offensive snaps. All three saw their playing time go up from a week ago. Part of that was the injury to Quincy Enunwa opening up reps, but this is still worth noting. Meanwhile, the rest of the tight end group took more of a back seat as Neal Sterling returned to the lineup for the first time in over a month. Sterling led tight ends with 36 snaps....

It is Wednesday, which normally means we do a crossover podcast with that week’s opponent. There is currently no show on the network for the Vikings, which means this week will have no crossover show. However, I can provide a Vikings expert to talk about this week’s opponent. Our podcast guest today is Chris Gates, who covers the Vikings at Daily Norseman. On today’s show Chris and I discuss Kirk Cousins, who was a Jets free agent target, John DeFilippo, who might be a Jets coaching target if the team makes a change in a few months, some of the players to watch on offense for...

If you read an in-depth article about offensive systems in the NFL, the odds are good that it will state there are three basic offensive systems in the NFL, Erhardt-Perkins, Air Coryell, and the West Coast Offense. Almost every NFL offensive coach has a pedigree that goes back to Ron Erhardt and/or Ray Perkins (Erhardt-Perkins), Don Coryell (Air Coryell), or Bill Walsh (West Coast Offense). Every coach running an offense once worked for a guy who once worked for a guy who once worked for a guy. Eventually you get to a coach who once worked for one of these four, and that explains the...

The Jets won on Sunday, which means we get to give out a game ball (or anti-anti-game ball if you prefer). We try to avoid giving the game ball to the quarterback and to repeat recipients whenever plausible. Sam Darnold’s performance was very good against the Colts, but it shows why we have those game ball rules. When the team wins, odds are good the quarterback performed like that. This is the rare game where my game ball standout is a special teamer. Jason Myers connected on 7 of 7 field goal attempts for the Jets and added 3 extra points. It is too simplistic to say that Myers got the...