Dolphins: 5 Jets Miami needs to account for

The Miami Dolphins will play the New York Jets early this year with their first meeting coming in week three at MetLife Stadium. They play them a second time four weeks later.

Miami isn’t expected to get a lot of push from the Jets this season. New York gutted their roster in an attempt to clear cap space while they rebuild and get younger. Todd Bowles is not considered to be on the hotseat this year but that could depend on how badly the Jets do this year.

When it comes to New York there is not a lot of expectations. Many believe that the Jets will challenge for the first pick in the 2018 NFL draft and that very well may be the case. As the 2017 league new year began the Jets released kicker Nick Folk, David Harris, Ryan Clady, Darrell Revis, and Nick Mangold among others.

Regardless of how bad the Jets are expected to be there is one certainty, they will play the Dolphins like their season depends on it. If the Dolphins overlook the Jets they could be in trouble. Here are five Jet players that Miami needs to account for in 2017.

Matt Forte

The Jets running game is Forte and Bilal Powell. Forte joined the Jets last season but behind a suspect offensive line didn’t produce what the Jets had hoped for when they made him an off-season addition.

In 2017 Forte carried the ball over 200 times but posted just over 800 yards on the season with seven touchdowns. Looking at the Jets offensive line this year doesn’t bode well for Forte. D’Brickashaw Ferguson retired in April of 2016, Mangold is gone, Clady is gone, and the line is going through some changes at every single position for the most part. Still, Forte can have a big impact if given a small amount of space to work with.

The rest.

To be honest with all of my readers, my intention was to do a five slide article on each of the Jets top five players but honestly. I don’t think there is a huge threat looking at their roster that will give Miami fits.

Offensively the offensive line is not scaring anyone right now and they should not be a big problem for Cameron Wake, Ndamukong Suh, and the rest of the defensive front. Austin Sefarian-Jenkins is the Jets top TE and he comes with a lot of question marks.

If you look at the quarterback situation the competition between Josh McCown, Bryce Petty, and Christian Hackenburg isn’t scaring anyone either. None of those quarterbacks are consistent and do not pose a threat on the ground with their legs.

At wide-receiver the Jets are going with second year pro Jalin Marshall and returing veteran Quincy Enunwa but with the questions at QB they don’t seem to offer much in the way of a threat.

Defensively the Jets are much better with Muhammad Wilkerson on the front edge but there is still a lot of talk about Wilkerson potentially being traded which weakens the team considerably. The best defensive player right now is 2nd year pro Leonard Williams. Williams is going to be a good football player but he can’t do all the work himself.

The top linebacker is now is Darron Lee but there are questions with his supporting unit. At corner Morris Claiborne is hoping to be the Jets future but he is still learning the game. The best prospects for 2017 seem to be at the safety position where Jamal Adams and Shamarko Thomas will compete for strong safety.

Overall the Jets can’t be overlooked by any means but singling out five players with an explanation on why the Dolphins need to account for them seems more like click bait. When looking at the Dolphins games against the Jets it’s more of doing their jobs rather than game-planning for a single or five players.