James Bettcher Explains Why Janoris Jenkins Primarily Plays One Side of the Field

Giants defensive coordinator James Bettcher, who typically opens his weekly press conference with a long, thought-out monologue, said there's no hard feelings between him and cornerback Janoris Jenkins.

A week ago, a very frustrated Giants cornerback Janoris Jenkins went off on a mini-rant about why he’s not allowed to travel with the opponent’s best receivers.

On not so many words, defensive coordinator James Bettcher explained that part of the reason has to do with the abundance of youth in the defensive backfield and how allowing one guy to travel could make it more complex for the already confused rookies to play effectively.

“The philosophy on that is if it works for everyone, it’s a great thing to do. If it works to where it allows our best guy to be on their best guy, but at the same time, the other guys that are on the field playing to have their feet settled and able to play the downs in whatever those man or zone, or whatever coverages you want to run,” Bettcher explained.

While the explanation makes sense, what is more concerning is why, after a dozen of so OTAs, all of training camp and 14 weeks of the regular season, the youth in the defensive secondary is still struggling to get their assignments down.

“I’ve seen young guys that are fast to pick up, I’ve seen Julian Love the last couple weeks, and he gets in there, and he’s fast to react, fast to respond, fast to communicate,” Bettcher said.

“So, I don’t know that it’s youth, it’s just you look at each situation, maybe even each week separately. When we traveled all the time, there were weeks we didn’t travel because it wasn’t maybe best for some of the stuff that the opponent did.”

You can hear Bettcher’s full explanation in the above video.