The Jets are a Hard Team to Handicap

August 30, 2012; Philadelphia, PA, USA; New York Jets quarterback Tim Tebow (15) shown on the sidelines against the Philadelphia Eagles during the third quarter at Lincoln Financial Field. The Eagles defeated the Jets 28-10. Mandatory Credit: Dale Zanine-US PRESSWIRE

The preseason is over, and the preparations for week one go into full swing. The roster will be down to 53 by 9 PM tonight.

As such, the coming days are the time where everyone starts to predict their team’s records for the year. Is your team primed to win 11 games? Is your team going to have to work hard for an 8-8 record. The talk has begun for the Jets as well. Many think that the Jets will have 8-9 wins. There have been a few double digit win predictions, but the majority have been that the Jets will be at around .500, with one being as low as 5-11.

The fact is, this is more difficult than usual when talking about the New York Jets. The reason? This season, more than any other in recent memory, the Jets are cloaked in secrecy. We haven’t seen enough to make the Jets record easy to handicap. People that call it right get a gold star, because this team is difficult to handicap.

The obvious part of this is the offense. Despite the fact we haven’t seen it yet, a significant portion of the Jets playbook is hiding from the world. Tim Tebow’s packages have not been seen, and we don’t know how effectively that the Jets are running them. Instead, all we have seen of Tim Tebow has been playing traditional quarterback. His work has been solely in the QB role, backing up Mark Sanchez. They have had Tim work on traditional packages, and not his option/Wildcat plays.

The play of the first team offense obviously gives us all reasons to be concerned. However, it’s difficult to understand how effectively these guys are going to be, with an entire set of plays being hidden. In other years, you have a more definite picture, but this year you don’t.

Even the defense has held plays back. The defense has been great, not allowing an offensive touchdown with the first team. They have also gotten a great deal of pressure with their front seven. We all know that this is an improvement from as year, and a great sign. But, we really haven’t seen all of the different types of blitz packages that Rex Ryan and the Jets are going to use. We haven’t seen all of what the defense is going to do either.

It just makes it more difficult to handicap this team.

Not that we aren’t going to try. We all absolutely will. It’s just harder this year, harder than most years.