Jets Camp — Aug 23: Smith Goes Seven for Seven in Pittsburgh

Geno Smith played one series in Pittsburgh on Friday night and completed all seven of his passes — 65 yards, a touchdown, and a 144.9 rating on a 10-play, 69-yard opening drive that ate nearly six minutes, per Jack Bell at the team's website. The finish was the play of the night: a fake handoff, a roll left, and a lofted throw over defenders to six-foot-seven tight end Jelani Woods, in what Bell notes was Smith's first game in a Jets uniform in roughly a decade. It came a week after a sore foot made him a late scratch from the preseason opener, which is what gives seven-for-seven its weight. Aaron Glenn's verdict, per Amanda Vogt's game recap on the team's site: "Very very efficient, he looked very comfortable. Exactly what we were looking for." Smith kept his own flatter: "There's always room for improvement, but we're always going to strive for perfection." The honest framing, per Nick Faria at Jets on SI: the Jets played their starters into the second quarter of the 17-0 shutout while Pittsburgh limited theirs — Will Howard started at quarterback for the Steelers and Drew Allar worked the second half — so the perfect series came against a defense missing most of its front line. Seven catchable, completed throws off a questionable foot still count.

The week's path there was deliberate. Smith was back at practice Monday on managed throwing volume, per the team's practice report from Vogt and Eric Allen — Glenn: "We have to do a really good job of making sure we don't push the limit so far that we end up going backwards" — and Wednesday he was held to nine team-period snaps by design before the staff turned him loose Friday.

Behind him, rookie Cade Klubnik keeps making the backup conversation interesting. The fourth-rounder went 10 of 14 for 75 yards with 16 rushing yards in Pittsburgh, behind a backup line Faria charted as struggling at both tackle spots, and went five-for-five with two red-zone touchdowns — to Woods and running back Kene Nwangwu — in Wednesday's practice, per the team's report. The national read has already skipped ahead: Colby Colwell at Jets on SI wrote Friday that Smith and Klubnik are the top two quarterbacks on the roster and framed Bailey Zappe as a cut candidate before the August 30 deadline. That is a columnist's depth chart, not the team's — Zappe went a clean six of eight for 65 yards in the same game, and Glenn has announced nothing — but the direction of the August evidence is not hard to read, and cutdown will settle it.

The defense pitched the shutout, with the usual preseason asterisk and some names worth remembering anyway. Second overall pick David Bailey got his first sack, dropping Howard for an 11-yard loss on third down, after a Monday practice in which he forced incompletions, got home on Klubnik and made run stops, per the team's reports — teammate Joseph Ossai's scouting line: "He'll pop somebody in their face one time and then... get the TFL." Bailey has played about 20 snaps across two preseason games, so the sample stays the sample. Andre Cisco and Samuel Womack III had the interceptions, newly acquired edge Nate Lynn sacked Allar twice in the second half with a spin move doing the work, and Junior Bergen — a receiver signed Wednesday — averaged over 10 yards on five punt returns and took a screen 44 yards, per Vogt's standouts file. Undrafted receiver Malik McClain converted both of his third-down targets, and Quincy Skinner Jr. caught a 31-yard touchdown from Brady Cook — depth-of-August names, filed accordingly.

The one bad turn of the week was the lead running back. Breece Hall left Monday's practice early after hurting his groin catching a Smith pass near the left sideline in the red-zone period, per Vogt and Allen. Glenn's first read — "I don't think it was a big deal, but I want to make sure I get the evaluation on that" — hardened by Tuesday into a two-to-three-week absence, with Glenn saying Hall should be ready for the regular season, per the team's report. That likely carries him past cut day and close to the opener, and it hands the rest of August's backfield work to Braelon Allen and Nwangwu. The rest of the ledger, quickly, mostly pointed up: T'Vondre Sweat and Ossai took their first team reps of the summer on pitch counts, Kingsley Enagbare and Mazi Smith returned, and Qwan'tez Stiggers was back on the field Wednesday in a red non-contact pinnie after clearing concussion protocol. Rookie corner Mory Bamba, the opener's four-deflection standout, is expected to miss a couple of weeks with a knee injury.

Back in July we previewed this team around a collision: the loudest turnover-luck signal in football — a zero-interception season with a decade of history pulling the bounce upward — meeting a veteran quarterback imported to catch it who led the league in giveaways himself, and we have been checking that read against camp every week since. This week fed both halves cleanly — the takeaway engine traveled to Pittsburgh and produced two interceptions and a shutout, and the quarterback answered his first availability question with a perfect series — so the read holds without much argument. What to watch: whether Hall's two-to-three-week timeline holds so he is in the Week 1 backfield, and what cutdown to 53 on Sunday, August 30 says about the backup quarterback job. We'll check after cut day.

_Data via nflverse._