Jets have a severe penalty issue that needs adjusting

The New York Jets have overachieved this season but one glaring area of opportunity is fixing their severe penalty issue. It needs adjusting immediately before it’s too late.

Coming into 2017, it was clear the New York Jets are going with a youth movement.  One of the main objectives of the year was to solidify a young nucleus and assess players who would come to be the future leaders of the football team.

With players like Jermaine Kearse, Robby Anderson, Leonard Williams, Jamal Adams, and Marcus Maye on board, one could infer the Jets are in good hands moving into the future. This young core of talent could be one to bring the Jets back into the playoffs moving forward.

Resetting the franchise with young players comes with a number of issues that the team has to address.  One of these struggles the Jets will have to deal with moving forward is decreasing the number of penalties.

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It is not only the fact that the Jets are penalized an excessively high amount, but it is getting to be historically bad. As of this writing, the Jets have committed 81 penalties totaling 739 yards. This is second highest in the league and the team is on pace to “destroy” the 1995 franchise record.  The Jets need to do their part to keep the penalty flag in the pockets of the officials.

Other teams may be able to avoid some of the issues that come with excessive penalties.  In spite of the overachieving the team has done so far, the Jets face more of an uphill climb in that aspect because they are significantly less talented than most teams across the league.

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Going through the rest of the season, hopefully, Todd Bowles can make adjustments and take action to remedy this issue as it will continuously plague the Jets moving forward and cost the team wins.  Even after this season there will be a new crop of young players coming in next season via the draft who could very well have the same problems. Curbing the excessive amount of penalties is an issue that the team absolutely has to address immediately.