08/04 — One more word on the Green & White Practice, and only because as I said Saturday, the defense really wasn't heard from much with the postpractice emphasis on QBs and Dustin Keller.

But the D deserved some kudos and we're giving to them today. Stephen Haynes has written today about LB Eric Barton, who talked up the defense, and I checked in with S Kerry Rhodes and LB Calvin Pace after this morning's practice.

The one number on both Rhodes' and Paces' minds was "3," as in the most important number on the down marker.

"It was all right," Pace said of the first- and second-team defenses' performance at the practice. "When it came down to it, it ended up kind of being a 7-on-7 practice. They weren't really calling a lot of running plays.

"It was good. We got some third-down working. They had a few big plays that we ideally wouldn't like to give up. But I think if you look at it as a whole, it was a good day's work. The third-down percentage was pretty good."

How good was it? Rhodes had an idea.

"I'm not sure if the numbers are correct, but I'm thinking the offense was 1-for-18 on third downs or something crazy like that," he said. "We still had some errors, of course, that we need to work on.

"But as a unit, we did good in trying to emphasize third downs. We had trouble with that last year. This year we wanted to work on it. So we came out and the offenses went 1-for-18, which is pretty damn good."

It would be folly to think the Jets offense will be that unproductive, or the defense that productive, in crunch-down conversions this regular season. But both offense and defense struggled in that department last season and the D looks to be on the road to recovery.

The preseason opener Thursday night with the Cleveland Browns of Derek Anderson, Braylon Edwards, Kellen Winslow, Jamal Lewis, et al., will offer a little more evidence of the turnaround.

"It's exciting having to go against another opponent, and a good opponent such as Cleveland," Pace said. "They were good last year, some strides were made and the should've gotten better. We know it's going to be vanilla, they're not coming out with their best stuff.

"But it's going to be a good test for us."

Here are side-by-side charts of the Jets' lowest third-down conversion rates on offense (left side) and highest rates on defense (right side) since 1990: