Three on D: Fitzpatrick, Sweat, Ponds

After each game, we typically highlight three defensive and three offensive players and look in detail at their performance. We'll wrap up today with the defense:

If the shoe Fitz

After his Jets debut lasted just a handful of plays, Minkah Fitzpatrick was back on Sunday and he was certainly in the middle of a lot of things, as he ended up with 16 tackles.

Of course, having a safety with 16 tackles isn't always a good thing (especially when the other safety, Dane Belton, had 14 of his own). Sure enough, nine of Fitzpatrick's tackles came on plays that gained more than 10 yards.

On a positive note, at least he finally intercepted a pass - the first Jets player to do so in a regular season game since the 2024 season finale. This is the kind of center field roaming that has been absent over the past year-plus:

Fitzpatrick was in on five tackles on plays that gained four yards or less, including this one where he cleaned up after a Demario Davis missed tackle.

Despite these positive contributions, Fitzpatrick was also the closest defender on completions of 18, 20 and 37 yards. On the 37-yarder he misread the route break on a deep post route.

Should we be worried that Fitzpatrick played his first full game of the season and it proved to be the Jets' worst defensive performance? Probably not. Fitzpatrick's performance was good on balance and his contributions should benefit them in the long run...if they can fix everything else.

Don't Sweat the small stuff

T'Vondre Sweat is another player who should be under scrutiny following this game because he was supposedly going to make the Jets more stout against the run, but they gave up over 200 yards in this game.

However, he's actually starting to come into his own in terms of his impact in the trenches and wouldn't be the first guy you'd point out as being at fault for most of the yardage the Jets gave up. For example, he wasn't even in the game on the longest run the Jets gave up (26 yards) and the second-longest (19 yards) went away from him.

His direct impact was minimal though, as he only had three tackles and a pressure. Two of those tackles came on plays stopped near the line of scrimmage with one seeing him shed a block to bring down the runner and this one seeing him blow up a goal line run with penetration.

Sweat was on the field for the Jets' goal line stand in the first half (and not on the field when the Bears punched it in from the goal line on their next drive). Actually, though, the two runs that were stopped at the goal line had little to do with him. He did make a big contribution on 3rd-and-goal, though, blowing by his man with a quick swim move with his pressure setting up an incompletion.

Of course, his other contribution against the pass was his disallowed interception. You can see his instinctive play here, with Azareye'h Thomas' heinous penalty visible on the right of the screen.

Sweat can hopefully continue in this vein but the struggles of every other interior lineman are somewhat concerning. The Jets seem to be missing David Onyemata but he's not coming back any time soon so youngsters like Jowon Briggs and Darrell Jackson need to step up.

Magic Ponds

This was our first extensive look at rookie D'Angelo Ponds who played just two snaps last week and none in preseason. He wasn't in the main rotation until Belton collided with Jarvis Brownlee, knocking Brownlee out of the game.

Although he was only on the field for 18 snaps, Ponds was right in the middle of things. He gave up a 21-yard catch, had three tackles, was called for two penalties and had an interception negated by one of those penalties.

Let's look at the interception-that-wasn't first. Nice job by Ponds to locate and make a play on this ball, but it was indeed a clear hold before the ball was thrown.

It's also surprising that Ponds was so shocked to see a flag thrown here. You never get away with that in the NFL...well, except for when the Bears' cornerback did the same thing to Garrett Wilson in the end zone.

His other penalty was for illegal contact away from the ball, and negated a third down incompletion. He was a little unfortunate on that one as the wide receiver initiated the first contact. However, a review of the all-22 film shows that he was still leaning on him way beyond five yards, and impeding his upfield progress. Ponds may need to make some adjustments to be cleaner in the weeks ahead.

That play actually came while he was rotating in as a dime back, as did the catch he gave up, on which the Bears stacked two receivers and Ponds and the outside receiver both picked up the one who stopped his route short while the other ran up the seam uncovered.

One thing Ponds showed was some feistiness in terms of fighting off blocks. His three tackles came on an 11-yard run and two shorter runs. This was a good open field tackle after fighting off a block.

Brownlee is in concussion protocol so there's a good chance Ponds will start this week even if Brownlee is cleared. If he can hold his own, Brownlee might not get that role back when he returns. Ponds has some things to clean up though.

Previously: Three on O: Williams, Okorafor, Woods