While Maybin has clearly benefited from very good secondary coverage he made more than a few sacks purely off speed. Of course having him on running plays was a liability but as a pure pass rush specialist he can be very dangerous and really cost the Jets nothing.
Pouha graded out as one of the best DT's in football while Devito is a great run stopper but underwhelming and Ellis and Wilk were rookies with no training camp. Wilkerson should take his game up a few notches this year after a very solid season for a rookie starting while Ellis will have to take the time to prove he isnt a bust. I think you could say the line is mediocre based off last year, not sure the worst the league is accurate. Hopefully the growth of the rookies and addition of Coples will change that.
The Jets largest problem last year outside of a lack of pressure was shoddy Safety play so if Landry and Bell can just be solid but unspectacular than that should also help solidify this D.
Not sure why the Pats fans seem to always throw stones at the D when it is by far the best thing about this team. Maybe the Offense and Special teams are too easy of targets...
Between Quinton Coples, Kyle Wilson, Muhammad Wilkerson, and Kenrick Ellis, the Jets do have a fair number of guys who are candidates to come in and contribute/make 'the leap'. The Jets seem to be relying on the fact that at least 2-3 of them will do that, much like the Pats are probably going to rely on some combination of Wilson, Dowling, and McCourty to pix their pass defense while some combination of Jones, Hightower, and/or Bequette solidifies the front seven. There's nothing inherently wrong with relying on young players to step up, and in the salary cap era it's probably necessary.
The difference, to me at least, is that the Jets have almost as many holes as the Patriots have, but a) fewer young guys to step up and fill them, and b) inferior contingency plans in the event that they don't pan out. If Wilkerson has a sophomore slump, what happens to the Jets' d-line? If Wilson doesn't improve significantly, then the Jets will have even worse CB depth than the Pats. If Chandler Jones doesn't do much for the Pats this year, we can still hope that Bequette, Cunningham, or Trevor Scott can step in and be serviceable, at least. Can the Jets say the same about Coples?
It's the same depth argument that we've all been having for years now. Say what you want about the Pats' D last year, but we lost two starters for the year (Bodden, Warren) before the season even started, after cutting two of the top three safeties from the previous season (a decision that i still disagree with). Then lost the #3 CB (Dowling) for the year early in the season, which meant that we played virtually the entire season without 2 of the team's top 4 corners, and one of the ones who was there, McCourty, played most of the season with a significant shoulder injury. Of the safeties who were left, we lost Josh Barrett (starter) for the season in game 6. For a while, the desperate state of the secondary was covered up in large part by a surprisingly good pass rush, which made it suck all the worse when the top passrusher, Carter, was lost for the season in week 15.
Basically, short of a Wilfork injury, last season was very close to "worst case scenario" territory for the Patriots defense, in terms of injury. And they still finished decently in points allowed. If I was a Jets fan, I would be optimistic about how good the D could be if it stays healthy and the young guys step up, but I'd also be terrified of how far south things can go if a couple of those guys fail to improve significantly or if they suffer a couple of injuries. Philosophically, they've sacrificed the ability to withstand injuries in order to have a higher ceiling, and whether or not that pans out depends entirely on how healthy they remain.
