New York Jets: Was Sauce Gardner actually bad?

When a team plays poorly, their fans tend to attack even their best players. With that in mind, perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise that in recent weeks many have criticized the play of New York Jets All Pro cornerback Sauce Gardner.

But was the young cornerback actually bad? Let's look at the statistics to find out.

First of all, his pure counting stats aren't bad considering how much he plays.

Still, his PFF is pretty poor, as he ranks 82nd in the league through Week 8. This is a significant drop from the top 10 finishes we were used to. This is partly due to some very poor grades in his tackling (41.8) and run defense (42.6), which are also backed up by some hard numbers.

His coverage grade is better, but still not outstanding at 69.2, which puts him 46th in the league. Given that PFF bases its grades on tape and uses a structured grading system, this would mean that Gardner played poorly on reps that didn't result in catches for one reason or another, such as on one play, in which Gardner is beaten but a quarterback throws the ball to another player.

All in all, it looks like Sauce is still performing well from a performance perspective and probably wasn't the reason the Jets lost games. However, PFF's assessments of Gardner appear to be in line with many Jets fans' eye test, which could indicate that some positive regression is in store in the coming weeks. Needless to say, Jets fans were hoping for none of this from their young All-Pro lockout cornerback in his third season.