HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. -- For the most part, the coach and the quarterback here are in accord on just about everything. Herm Edwards and Chad Pennington, a couple of well-spoken, candid, self-motivated and like-minded men, seeking the singular goal of a Super Bowl championship for their franchise.

	Chad Pennington went 8-4 as the Jets starting QB last season.

But on Monday, as Pennington opened what is really his first training camp as the New York Jets starter, he emphasized a need to "not forget the baby steps" as the defending champions of the NFL's most balanced division attempt in 2003 to progress deeper into the playoffs this time around.

At the same time, Edwards, who has stewarded the Jets into postseason play in each of his first two seasons as a head coach, was talking about a quantum leap forward.

At least, that is, in the passing game. Or, more pointedly, in his strong desire -- call it a mandate, to be precise -- to remove the shackles and get more vertical this season.

It is a somewhat incongruous goal, asking a quarterback whose trump card is his uncanny accuracy in the short and intermediate area, to take some risks with the deep ball. Neither does Edwards' demand for a passing game that assumes increased risk dovetail all that comfortably with the West Coast-style design of offensive coordinator Paul Hackett.

But, as Edwards emphatically pointed out, he is the head coach and that's what he wants. Clearly he believes that risking a few points off Pennington's league-best 68.9 percent completion rate of 2002, or jeopardizing the kind of 104.2 efficiency rating the youngster posted in his first year as the starter, is worth the potential reward.

It's as if Edwards is weary of an offense that succeeds by playing small-ball. This year, at least more so than the past two seasons, Edwards wants his team to swing for the fences.

"I don't want to say more daring, but we want to make more big plays up the boundary," acknowledged Edwards of an imperative that he delivered to his offensive staffers in the offseason. "You don't want to be a team that just throws the ball deep one or two times a game. You want to do it six or seven times. I'm talking about plays where we drop back and where the wide receiver says to the cornerback, 'Hey, I'm just running right by you.' That's what I'm talking about."

Such classic deep-ball connections -- of the ilk that conjure up visions of a wide receiver bursting up the sideline on a "nine" route, separating from the cornerback as the ball is in the air, and then making an over-the-shoulder grab and sprinting into the end zone -- have indeed been rare for the Jets of late.

Fact is, the Jets might be more aptly viewed as the Puddle Jumpers, were team nicknames based solely on data from the passing game.

New York had just three pass plays of 40 yards or more in 2002, and ranked among the bottom teams in completions of 20 yards or more, the latter category defining "big plays" in most statistical analyses. The average of 11.0 yards per completion was 12th smallest in the NFL and, while New York's average yards per pass play (6.61 yards) was 12 percent above the league standard in an esoteric statistic every offensive coordinator scrutinizes very closely, it is not a passing attack that strikes fear into defenders.

As a former NFL cornerback, a nine-year veteran who always played an aggressive style, Edwards loved going up against offenses that ignored the deep ball. As a head coach, he is not inclined to embrace a cautionary mindset, and that is now evident. Edwards wants to prolong the Jets' season in 2003 by stretching the field even if his is not a lineup that has cornerbacks backpedaling as soon as it breaks the huddle.

	“	I don't want to say more daring, but we want to make more big plays up the boundary. You don't want to be a team that just throws the ball deep one or two times a game. You want to do it six or seven times. I'm talking about plays where we drop back and where the wide receiver says to the cornerback, 'Hey, I'm just running right by you.' That's what I'm talking about. ”
		— Herm Edwards, Jets coach

While the deep ball is hardly his strength, Pennington is on board with increasing the number of times the Jets test a secondary up the field, he said.

"I think pushing the ball vertically, what I think we have to do, is be more consistent," said the 2001 first-round draft choice, who did not start a single game his first two years in the league. "The times we pushed the ball last season, I wasn't very consistent with it. Or sometimes, you try to push the ball and (the play) isn't there, and you check down (to another receiver). Our concentration this year will be on having success vertically."

For the Jets to succeed, though, in improving their long-ball game, they will first have to navigate a few hurdles.

Primary among them might be Pennington's arm strength or, more accurately, his lack of muscle. A terrific student of the game, a gym rat-type player who works hard and has a strong will to succeed, Pennington possesses most of the qualities of a top quarterback. He is Rhodes Scholar-bright, a natural leader, knows where to go with the football. But he is not blessed with a howitzer hanging from his right shoulder. Instead, his game is getting the ball out quickly, throwing to spots, marvelous accuracy, superb timing.

Noted one Jets source: "Chad is what he is, you know? Now what he is, believe me, is pretty damned good. A lot of teams would kill for this guy. But he is challenged on the deep ball and he's going to have to find a way to get it done without the big gun."

One element on which the Jets worked, as they focused on the deep ball in the offseason, is keeping the football in the field of play on the long pass. Too often in 2002, Pennington threw the ball out of bounds, didn't allow his receivers the opportunity to perhaps make a play. The other component, Edwards said, was working on Pennington's legs.

At age 27, there might not be much Pennington can do to augment his overall velocity or deep touch. But a quarterback, much like a pitcher, throws with his legs. Pennington has dropped about four pounds from his playing weight of a year ago, but his legs seem to be stronger and, coupled with some mechanical fine-tuning, could help to compensate for the absence of pure arm strength.

Yet on Monday morning's initial camp practice, wide receiver Santana Moss streaked up the right sideline, got behind a corner, and looked back for the ball at about 45-50 yards. The pass fell, quite noticeably, three of four yards short.

The other issue with which the Jets must contend is a wide receiver corps that, having lost Laveranues Coles as a restricted free agent, lacks a proven burner. Wayne Chrebet isn't likely to find an extra step of explosiveness at age 29. Ten-year pro Curtis Conway, signed as an unrestricted free agent and penciled into Coles' former spot, had a surprising number of 40-yard catches the past two years, but, at 32, doesn't freeze corners with his speed, as he used to. "Just a guy," assessed one New York staffer. "Hopefully, we can get one year out of him."

Former first-round draft choice Moss, who has quickness and elusiveness, will have to prove he can remain healthy for more than a couple games in a row. Hardly the most durable receiver, Moss is suspect, since not even the Jets are certain he will ever hold up for the long haul of a 16-game schedule.

Edwards, Hackett and team management have diligently toed the party line -- that Coles will not be severely missed and that New York has three starting-caliber receivers who can get the job done -- but the words sometimes ring hollow. Losing Coles, a player the Jets developed, who was home-grown and a source of accomplishment for the personnel department, was a blow. His absence is even more pronounced given Edwards' call for the deep ball.

It's true that Coles wasn't a classic deep threat, and that many of his biggest plays came because of his rare ability to add huge yards after the catch, but he was still the outside player on the roster that opposing defensive coordinators feared most.

	Snap decision
	Hard to believe, especially for a West Coast-style offense designed to move the ball in chunks, but the Jets have had the fewest offensive snaps in the league in each of the last two seasons. They had just 917 so-called "ball control" plays in 2002 and 928 in 2001. Those are among the dozen lowest snap totals of the past 10 seasons. Here's a look at the teams that had the fewest snaps dating back to 1993:
	Snaps	Team	Year
	859	Browns	2000
	865	Browns	1999
	891	Lions	1994
	899	Colts	1994
	913	Bears	1993
	915	Bucs	1997
	917	Jets	2002
	923	Saints	1996
	925	Falcons	2000
	925	Saints	1997
	926	Ravens	1998
	928	Jets	2001

"But the fact is, he's not here, and you move on," Edwards noted pragmatically. "You just find a way to get it done with the people you've got here. You make subtle changes, you tweak a thing here or there, you adjust to what's available to you."

The emphasis on challenging secondaries with the long ball is certainly more than just a tweak for the New York offense. If it actually occurs, even on a somewhat modest basis, it will represent the kind of giant step Edwards desperately wants to take. And given the results of the last couple seasons, when the Jets were sporadically effective in the West Coast offense but often moved in spasms, perhaps it's about time for a fresh approach.

Throwing the ball deep might be out of step with what the West Coast offense is truly designed for but posting the fewest first downs in the league, as New York has done in each of the past two seasons, is equally mind-boggling. The West Coast style really is essentially designed to churn out first downs. And if an offense is doing that, it should generate more snaps, the logic would appear to dictate.

But the Jets had just 917 so-called "ball control plays" in 2002 and 928 the previous season. The league averages, respectively, in those seasons were 1,017.8 plays and 1,001.4. So over the last two seasons, New York got off 174 fewer offensive plays than the average league team.

It's a glaring disadvantage, one underlined forcefully by Edwards on Monday, and one that has to change. It might be ironic, under such circumstances, to want to throw the deep ball more, Edwards allowed. After all, miss connecting on a deep pass on first down and now an offense faces second-and-10. But to Edwards, the risk is worth the reward, if for no other reason than altering the mindset of his own teams and of opponents, too.

"You don't want to be overly 'typed' as a certain kind of team," Edwards said last week, before camp began. "Now and then, you want to throw a changeup at them, you know, to keep people on their toes. And we're going to do that this year."

Len Pasquarelli is a senior writer for ESPN.com.