Rex Ryan Says Calvin Pryor ‘Hasn’t Made the Impact Expected’

New York Jets head coach Rex Ryan said that rookie safety Calvin Pryor hasn’t yet met the expectations the team had for him when the season began.

More from New York Jets

The New York Jets have plenty of blame to go around for the team’s abysmal 1-6 start to the 2014 NFL season, but regardless of the difficult situation Jets players are stuck in, each man is responsible for his performance. So it should come as no surprise that, despite the fact that the Jets have been a bit of a mess on defense at times, coach Rex Ryan didn’t shy from honestly assessing the first half of safety Calvin Pryor’s rookie season.

“[Pryor] hasn’t had the impact necessarily that I think all of us had expected,” Ryan said via NFL.com. “But quite honestly, we haven’t done a whole lot of — you know, our defense has been played a little differently than maybe we anticipated. So I think we had to make some of those adjustments along the way.”

This team hasn’t been the best environment for a rookie whose game was always going to be tuned toward defending one side of an offense and less so another. Calvin Pryor is a hard hitting safety whose primary effectiveness comes in run defense. He was never a big coverage safety in college and the Jets would be foolish to immediately expect that now.

Unfortunately, coverage is where the Jets need the most help as they have a middling pass defense that hampers its top-ten rush defense. Ryan knew Pryor’s limitations coming into the season, which is why he doesn’t harp too badly on the rookie here, but it’s clear that the team needs more from its safeties in stopping the pass. If only Percy Harvin could cover receivers.

More from FanSided