When the Jacksonville Jaguars travel to New York this weekend, they'll have two former New York Jets in tow. Safety Dwight Lowery and cornerback Drew Coleman have both spent the past few seasons as role players on the Jets vaunted defense. Given the fact that both played and played quite a bit on the Jets under Rex Ryan, how much can they actually help the Jaguars when it comes to gameplanning against the Jets defense?
How much can they help the Jaguars defense in game planning against Mark Sanchez and the Jets offense they're used to practicing against?
I asked John B of GangGreenNation.com about this, and how much it would actually help.
It certainly could not hurt the Jaguars. When Shaun Ellis signed with the Patriots, Rex Ryan commented he was not as concerned with a lineman leaving and potentially giving information as he would have been with a guy in the back of the defense who is familiar with the whole scheme.
With that said, I would not expect the impact to be too great. So much of what teams do are game plan specific to an opponent. The playbook stays the same, but how a team uses it and what a team emphasizes differ each week.
I would imagine Lowery and Coleman can help a bit knowing subtle tendencies and weaknesses of the coaches and players they went up against every day in practice. How much of a difference does this make? I don't know.
I agree with John in the fact that I think these things tend to get overstated. Coleman and Lowery can certainly tip the Jaguars coaching staff off to some minor things, as can starting safety Dawan Landry given he also played many seasons under Rex Ryan as a defensive coordinator. Can that really help that much more than watching film, though?
We also have to consider the flip side of the situation, Rex Ryan knows Coleman, Lowery, and Landry's weaknesses and how they can be exploited by an offense.