It took an unfortunate injury for the New York Jets to learn a valuable lesson when it comes to their depth. Sometimes you have to switch things up to get better results.
For the past few weeks now, running backs Matt Forte and Bilal Powell have been completely misused by the New York Jets. For whatever reason, offensive coordinator Chan Gailey put too much faith in the passing game instead of focusing on the tried-and-true methods of establishing a ground game.
The Jets are built to run the football yet Gailey didn’t trust it enough to give it a chunk of his offensive plays. The four games the Jets won this season were achievable due to committing to the run. For the past few weeks, Forte hasn’t been getting the job done due to the little reps he’s been getting by Gailey.
It took an unfortunate injury to Forte for the Jets to learn a valuable lesson in the grand scheme of things. Once Forte was determined to be out for the rest of their Week 14 matchup against the San Francisco 49ers, the Jets stuck with running the football. This was when Powell stepped up and delivered big time since well, he finally got the reps to do so.
Powell totaled a career-high 179 scrimmage yards which included 145 rushing yards and two touchdowns. It was just the second time in Powell’s career he rushed for over 100 yards. Now the question is, why the heck haven’t the Jets given him more reps throughout the season?
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We may never know the true answer but clearly, Powell’s skill-set has major potential to continue getting better over the years. The Jets need to put more trust into their players, especially their depth since who knows how this season could have turned out had they given more emphasis to their ground game.
Overall, Powell deserves some major recognition for a job well done since he gave fans something to smile about at least for the next few days. Hopefully, the Jets continue to give him more reps to continue ending this season on a positive note.
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