Coach Killer, Week 4: Kris Jenkins

Every week, NFL FanHouse hits the lowlights from Sunday's action, looking at those players who did the most to move their head coaches that much closer to returning to the Bed and Breakfast business.

Sometimes, picking one player for the week's Coach Killer is tough. When you've got Tony Romo's decision-making, JaMarcus Russell's ineptitude, Mark Clayton's stone hands and the entire St. Louis Rams' existence to choose from, you wish the bounty of bad could be spread across multiple weeks so you can hit them all. Alas, we can't.

There has been no shortage of criticism lobbed at those people thus far this week (including at FanHouse). It seemed easy to pick on them more. While there's been some heat in the general direction of this week's subject of Coach Killers, tucked away in the trenches you're obscured a bit more from the national media. Until now, that is.

You're billed as perhaps the most dominant force on what is considered the best defense in the league. In less than two years you've completely reformed your image, from never-healthy has-been to elite hellraiser.

Yet in the biggest game of the Jets' season, and maybe the NFL season thus far, Kris Jenkins pretty much laid an egg.

Sure, he flashed signs of his stout self on a critical 4th-and-1 in the third quarter, getting a push on his blockers while the defense swarmed to Pierre Thomas in the backfield. But he blew it on a later 4th-and-inches in the fourth quarter, falling for a savvy hard count by Drew Brees and jumping offside, a penalty which prolonged a Saints drive that eventually ended in a Thomas touchdown that made the game 24-10 with six minutes left. The Saints might have converted that 4th-and-inches anyway, but given that the Jets had stopped them twice previously on short fourth downs, it was far from a sure thing.

"It hurts to have to talk about, because you don't ever want to feel like something that you did helps contribute to your team losing, but right now that's how I feel," Jenkins said after the game.

Beyond that, though, Jenkins was simply a non-factor. While the Jets defense as a whole did a great job bottling up the Saints offense, the defensive line didn't have its best game, and Jenkins was the worst of the bunch. He was effectively nullified up by the Saints' strong interior offensive line, led by what some consider the best duo of young guards in the league, Jahri Evans and Carl Nicks.

Cue the football insiders who will claim that a nose tackle is equally effective when he's occupying blocks as when he's bursting through to the backfield. And they're right. But the Saints didn't double-team Jenkins a ton -- certainly not enough to explain his absence for most of the contest.

And it was imperative that he in particular make noise in this contest, because pressure up the middle is the only kind of pressure that bothers Brees. While the Jets did get some heat on Brees, they didn't sack him once, didn't force an interception, and only really seriously hurried him on a handful of throws. That's because Brees is an expert at feeling pressure on the outside and stepping into the pocket. The Saints will let defenses attack their tackles as long as Brees has a yard or two in front of him to work with. Jenkins ensured that space would be there.

Entering this year, Jenkins vowed not to repeat the second-half tumble his play took last season. We've yet to see if he holds up that end of the bargain, but his dramatic drop in impact against the Saints made it a lot more difficult for the Jets to win a game they by all accounts could have won, Mark Sanchez's turnovers aside.