Three on O: Cooper, Allen, Meredith

After each game, we'll be highlighting three defensive and three offensive players and looking in detail at their performance. For a change, we'll start today with the offense:

Cooper Star Potential

Heading into week six, the Jets would have been hoping that the rookie of the week award wasn't going to prove to be an albatross for Omar Cooper Jr. David Bailey and Kenyon Sadiq both won the award only to struggle the following week in a Jets loss. While the Jets lost again in the week after he won the award, at least Cooper was able to back up the previous week's performance with another good one.

Cooper ended up with 115 yards and a touchdown on five catches, although 112 of those 115 yards actually came on two big plays. Cooper is already showing he can make plays down the field and turn them into bigger gains with his abilities after the catch.

His other big play came on a deep ball as he got a step on the cornerback and Geno Smith just squeezed the throw in front of the safety coming across. Perhaps the most impressive part of this play, though, was how Cooper dragged the tackler for an extra 10-15 yards.

As noted, the other three catches netted just three yards but that included his second touchdown in as many weeks, as the Jets fooled Miami by lining him up in the backfield with Braelon Allen out wide. Two other dump-offs didn't really create any yardage and you suspect the Jets might feed Garrett Wilson some of those types of plays in future just to appease critics who say he doesn't see enough of the ball.

Cooper had an negative impact as a blocker and may have been partly to blame for the Mason Taylor illegal shift penalty that negated a two-point conversion. However, as long as he keeps producing, he can work on those things. You'd just like to see his production elevating the offense rather than just being at the expense of other playmakers, but that's on the quarterback and/or the offensive coaching staff.

Allen Key

Braelon Allen has had excellent production while Breece Hall has been out and the Jets arguably haven't missed a beat in that area. It also makes you wonder what Allen could produce over a full season if he was in the lead role all the time.

His improvement this year has been clear, especially in terms of his patience and contact balance. This is, without a doubt, the best run of his career so far:

Allen has also been producing in the passing game. He's handled blitz pickup assignments well and caught a career-high six passes on Sunday. Even though the longest of these was only seven yards, they helped keep the offense rolling and included this key 3rd-and-short conversion.

In all, Allen contributed 134 yards on 23 touches and, over the past three games, he's rushed for 298 with another 56 through the air.

It will be interesting to see how things evolve when Hall returns.

Meredith Christmas

Also potentially about to return is Dylan Parham, so let's check out how his replacement, Jordan Meredith, has fared in his absence.

After giving up a sack in his first three appearances, Meredith has been better in pass protection over the past two games. He has also been penalty-free for the past two games after having two in the Browns game.

It's in the running game where the Jets were supposedly most downgraded because Parham is currently grading out as the number one run blocker on Pro Football Focus.

However, Meredith had some nice moments in the running game this week. This play was superbly blocked with four blocks popping in rhythmic succession to enable Allen to hit the second level untouched and at full speed.

Armand Membou seals the edge, a pulling Meredith and Taylor at the second level each kick their man to the outside simultaneously and then Sadiq pulls and locks onto his man at the second level. Beautiful.

This play is similar. Membou and Joe Tippmann lock down the left side with simultaneous pancakes, Meredith again pulls and unleashes a pancake of his own and Sadiq goes straight ahead for a fourth pancake as an untouched Allen once again fires out to the second level.

Possibly the best block of all, though, isn't one of the four pancakes. Instead, Olu Fashanu also pulls right but then loops back to seal off the other linebacker. Again, beautiful.

The Jets' running game has looked really good in places, albeit terrible whenever they've tried to muscle their way to a crucial yard in short yardage situations. If Parham comes back in for Meredith, it will be interesting to see how much of a difference that will make in these areas.

Three-on-D will follow tomorrow.