Aaron Glenn spent the offseason talking up a Jets offense that would lean harder on its running backs in the passing game. Frank Reich echoed the same idea. On paper, it fit neatly: Breece Hall has already shown he can be dangerous as a receiver, and Glenn also pointed to Braelon Allen’s knee injury, which wiped out the final three months of last season, as a factor in how the offense was shaped.
But the summer tape and practice looks suggest that plan never really got rolling.
According to The Athletic’s Zack Rosenblatt, Geno Smith threw just seven total passes to running backs over the summer. Hall was targeted three times, while Allen got the other four. It’s not clear whether any of the Jets’ backup quarterbacks had better results with Hall, Allen or Isaiah Davis during camp.
That limited usage carried into the preseason, where Allen was the only one of New York’s top three backs to record a catch. It went for five yards against the Steelers on Aug. 21, in case you missed it.
“That was the vision with [Allen], Breece Hall and Isaiah Davis last year,” Glenn said in June.
The numbers naturally raise the question of how much Justin Fields influenced Allen’s lack of targets before the injury. Hall finished with 36 catches, his fewest since his rookie season, when he had 19 before going down in the seventh game. Even so, he was tracking toward about 46 receptions and 529 yards, and that came with Zach Wilson, Mike White and Joe Flacco all throwing passes his way.
There’s also the usual training-camp wrinkle: teams don’t always show everything. But that explanation usually applies to certain plays or formations, not an entire concept like getting backs involved in the passing game.
Still, the Jets do have more receiving help than they did four months ago. Adonai Mitchell has locked in as the No. 2 wideout, Isaiah Williams has been turning heads, and ex-Colts tight end Jelani Woods, who previously played for Reich in Indianapolis, earned a 53-man roster spot after a strong summer.
So for now, this is less a crisis than a missed opportunity. The Jets would rather be debating why Smith didn’t throw much to his running backs than dealing with another full-blown offensive mess and wondering how long it will take ownership to hit the reset button on Glenn and Darren Mougey.
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