Definite trend with both.Norton, in our podcast last week, suggested that opposing teams were targeting the Jets outside the hashmarks, presumably due to the improved run defense among the front seven and relatively weak corner play (until Revis began to step up). Those gameplans may have resulted in the Jets corners blowing up in the stat lines. Far be it from me to argue with the Guru, and I only saw the Week 2 game, but the Jets have faced the fifth most rushing attempts thus far and a reasonable run-pass split against so I'm having a hard time chalking it up to gameplans. It is clear that the ends and Vilma are playing much better though. Still, I don't think there's much excuse for Rhodes right now. Bad luck, questionable play, whatever. Four weeks is too long to keep providing a different excuse. I wouldn't cut him and he's talented enough to bounce back, but he deserves a bench spot until something changes.Suggs is a different issue and I'm not as fussy about him...yet. The Ravens are using much more 3-4 than they had in previous seasons. That's not a huge hindrance, as Suggs is still coming as a rush backer as frequently as ever. But he's feeling the ripple effects of missing Trevor Pryce and the downgrade from Adalius Thomas to Jarrett Johnson. There's plenty of reason for optimism here, though. Suggs has had eight solos and three passes defended in the past three weeks and is still around the ball. While it would've been nice to see sacks against matchups like ARI and CLE, he still has a string of juicy matchups on the way -- SF/STL/BUF before the bye -- before slipping back into average matchups the rest of the way. He's risky in big play leagues right now, but still worth starting over the next three weeks and an attractive buy low candidate. Hopefully, he'll take advantage.
