Another Missed Opportunity To Steal Another Game As An Underdog On The Road Could Haunt Jets
The Vikings scored on four of their possessions on Sunday. The Jets put up points on five of their drives…and lost.
The story of the Jets’ 27-22 defeat in Minnesota can obviously be traced to missed opportunities. New York settled for field goals on three straight trips into the red zone to start the second half and saw receiver Braxton Berrios drop a touchdown pass in the end zone on fourth-and-goal from the 1-yard line with 1:43 to go. On New York’s last gasp drive, quarterback Mike White marched the team inside the Vikings 20-yard line again, but his fourth-and-10 pass was picked off by Vikings safety Camryn Bynum with 10 seconds remaining.
If this were Week 1, I would have accepted a close loss on the road to a team that would go on to be 10-2 and called it progress. White made some big-time throws, the defense stepped up after a bad first half to hold a very skilled offense to seven points, and their kicker Greg Zuerlein set a franchise field goal record with a 60-yard bomb at the end of the first half. None of those things seemed possible a year ago.
Unfortunately, we’re in a different world now, which makes this loss a missed opportunity in the macro sense as well. Jets fans are no longer reviewing tankathon.com’s odds for securing the highest draft pick after games—we go straight to the standings tab to look at possible playoff scenarios.
That’s why this one hurts, even though, thanks to outside help, New York (7-5) was able to hold onto the seventh and final wild card seed in the AFC. The Jets, who own the NFL’s longest postseason drought at 12 seasons, will still probably have to get to ten wins to qualify for this season’s tournament, meaning they’ll have to win at least one of their remaining three games—all on the road, starting Sunday in Buffalo for a rematch of Gang Green’s 20-17 upset at MetLife Stadium in Week 9--where they will clearly enter as underdogs. And that’s assuming (Yeah, I know full well that’s not a smart thing to do when it comes to this franchise) they’ll be able to hold serve on their home games against lesser foes Detroit and Jacksonville.
The path would have been a heck of a lot simpler had the offense converted on just one of its opportunities to take the lead in Sunday’s fourth quarter. Offensive Coordinator Mike LaFleur has a lot to review. For all the pass plays he called in the red zone (18 of 24 red zone snaps, per ESPN’s Rich Cimini), I counted only two that were thrown into the end zone. The others were swing passes or dump offs over the middle short of the goal line, where yards after the catch are a lot tougher due to the condensed area. As for the run calls, though LaFleur attempted some trickery with receiver jet sweeps (that didn’t fool anyone), he never allowed quick-running back Zonovan Knight to test the boundaries as opposed to the standard dives up the middle against a stacked Minnesota defense.
Some of the tentativeness near the goal line could have been on White, who may have been too leery of making the big mistake that could cost the Jets the game. How many times on Sunday did he throw checkdowns to running back Ty Johnson that had an infinitesimal chance of picking up a third-and-long? No wonder the Jets were a brutal 3-for-16 on third downs on the day.
This isn’t to say that Zach Wilson, who was inactive for a second straight week after a horrific performance during a 10-3 loss at New England, would have fared better than White. By that point, Wilson seemed incapable of processing what the defenses were giving him so he could get balls out on time and therefore required a “reset”, as Jets Head Coach Robert Saleh calls it. Neither of White’s two interceptions were solely on him—his first one came on a third-and-2 pass on New York’s opening possession where he put the ball in receiver Corey Davis’ hands as he was hit, forcing the ball to be popped up into the arms of Vikings safety Harrison Smith.
However, the game plan shouldn’t have called for White to be a gunslinger. 58 dropbacks is a tad too much, even if the Jets were down, 20-3, at one point in the second quarter. In addition, Minnesota came into the game as one of the worst teams in the league in defending the play-action pass, yet LaFleur called way too few of those.
Still, the Jets were in a great position to steal another game on the road as an underdog. Gang Green had all the good fourth-quarter fortune earlier in the season, squeaking out comeback wins in Cleveland and Pittsburgh in addition to outlasting the Bills down the stretch. With the end-game debacle in New England and now this game, the breaks seem to be evening out.
It remains to be seen whether the Jets will rue these missed opportunities.