Three on D: Sherwood, Ossai, Cisco

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

What a Shameian

Linebacker Jamien Sherwood season is off to a bit of a shaky start and the Lions exploited him in coverage to the tune of 127 yards on 10 targets. The only incompletion on a play where he was in coverage was a drop.

A large chunk of that yardage came on Isaac TeSlaa's 49-yard catch and run late in the game, just after the Jets had tied the score, so it was a major momentum shifter. On the play, TeSlaa ran a crossing route which Demario Davis passed off to an oblivious Sherwood, whose eyes remained transfixed on the backfield.

Aside from this, the longest catch credited against him was a 21-yard leaping catch by Jameson Williams on a zone coverage where Sherwood didn't drop deep enough and/or Andre Cisco was too deep.

He had two other catches of more than 10 yards - one on a dump-off underneath to Sione Vaki as he was too deep - and another on this screen pass where Sherwood overreacted to the run action, quickly recovered to get out to the flat, but then found himself easily driven out of the play by Christian Mahogany.

That sums up quite well the decision making process Sherwood is going through on a given play, and how he just doesn't quite have things down yet though.

He also had a bad missed tackle when he appeared to have Jahmyr Gibbs wrapped up, although it was his only one of the game.

Sherwood ended up with eight tackles, so he did have some positives, including this tackle for loss.

However, only one of his other tackles was on a gain of less than six yards and that was a positive play for the offense as it was a three-yard gain on first down from the four-yard line.

Sherwood, who - to be fair to him - only gave up 22 yards on six targets through the first two games, has been inconsistent but the Jets will hope that he and Davis gain chemistry over the course of the season, so that they are finishing each others sentences by the business end of the year. That would be much like CJ Mosley and Quincy Williams eventually did.

Interestingly, though, he was off the field for four snaps as the Jets operated with just one off-ball linebacker on some plays.

Ossai with my little eye

Joseph Ossai's Jets debut was hardly memorable. He had as many missed tackles as he had tackles, and the two tackles he was credited with came on a seven yard run and a successful short-yardage conversion. He also failed to register any pressure on 11 pass rush attempts.

Furthermore, Ossai was particularly lucky that two of his worst mistakes weren't really punished.

First, he badly whiffed on a tackle when Gibbs cut back against the grain for an 18-yard gain but Sherwood was held at the second level, negating the play.

After that, he was in coverage on Sam LaPorta on one play and first got away with a blatant hold, then got beaten badly over the middle only for Sherwood to basically bail him out again with a pressure that caused Jared Goff's pass to be off-target on what should have been an easy first down. On this occasion, the Lions got a first down anyway due to an unrelated penalty on Azareye'h Thomas.

Ossai only played 28 snaps so he may have been on a pitch count anyway as he returned from his foot injury, but there were a couple of positive flashes.

Here's an example of one of the things he was advertised as being able to bring to the table, as he sets the edge to force a run out wide, so his teammate can stop it for a loss.

Ossai easily and patiently controlled his blocker as he also drew a holding penalty on this play.

The other play on which Ossai stood out was another running play on which he blew past Penei Sewell with an impressive swim move to get into the backfield. Although he wasn't able to affect the run up the middle, he then got in on the stop as the play went for a limited gain.

Hopefully the veteran will look more dynamic as he gets up to game speed, and that will lead to more production.

Cisco Inferno

Andre Cisco is making the most of his opportunity to start with Minkah Fitzpatrick out and he did a decent job on Sunday with six tackles including a third down sack.

Perhaps his best play of the day showcased a quick read and some good range to hold this play to a short gain.

Other than that, he only gave up one catch for five yards, but it was a big one because it came on 4th-and-2 and set up a touchdown. Cisco was too far off the receiver but then compounded the mistake of giving up the completion by also diving past him without making contact, which nearly led to a touchdown as the receiver was almost able to get back up again before he was down by contact.

None of the rest of Cisco's tackles were near the line of scrimmage, including a touchdown saving tackle on TeSlaa's big catch, and - as noted - he may have been too far off on the downfield catch by Williams.

Cisco and Dane Belton are holding the fort for now, and his versatility will come in useful even after Fitzpatrick returns. The Jets will be hoping that Fitzpatrick will upgrade them when he's back, but realistically the safeties are doing okay without him so it's difficult to see where it will make any significant difference.

Three-on-O will follow tomorrow.