FLORHAM PARK, N.J. -- When Rex Ryan met with his coaching staff early in the week, he put out a suggestion box, so to speak, asking for ideas on how to get the team out of its funk. OL coach Dave DeGuglielmo offered this:

An eight-minute period in practice in which the first-team offense faced the first-team defense -- the type of thing they do in training camp.

So they did it Thursday, and Ryan loved it. All but one play in the period was a run. They used running plays from their base, power and boss packages. It wasn't live tackling, but it was full-speed. It made sense, considering their problems running and stopping the run.

"I challenged our guys to compete against each other," Ryan said Friday. "The only way to get better is to go full-speed against each other. That's what we got back to."

INJURY UPDATE: TE Dustin Keller (hamstring), WR Stephen Hill (hamstring), NT Sione Po'uha (back) and LB Bryan Thomas (hamstring) are expected to miss practice for the second straight day. There's virtually no chance of Hill playing Monday night against the Texans. Po'uha and Thomas are major question marks. Losing both players would be a big hit to the already beleaguered run defense.