Good Thing The Jets Kick The Can Game With Kickers Settled On Greg The Leg
When It Came To Fourth Downs, Jets Fortunate Broncos Hackett Couldn’t Hack It
The Jets have had plenty of holes on their roster during the previous four seasons of horrendous football, so even if they had solidified their erratic placekicking, it would have been the equivalent of putting a band aid on a paper cut after you were shot in chest.
Not that it was really an either/or situation, but the fact that Gang Green failed to settle on a kicker after allowing Jason Myers to skip to Seattle in free agency following his Pro Bowl 2018 campaign didn’t have much to do with their fates. They still would have stunk even if they had a kicker who could have helped them squeeze out an extra win or two during those regrettable years.
It’s totally different now.
The Jets, 16-9 victors in Denver on Sunday, are now 5-2 and have to be taken seriously as playoff contenders. And when the offense struggles as much as they just did, having an efficient kicker can make all the difference in the world. The neverending revolving door of kickers entering and exiting the Jets Florham Park facility for auditions had to stop.
Fortunately, it stopped on Greg Zuerlein, who was New York’s best offensive weapon after rookie running back Breece Hall took a hit on a second quarter play and did not return. Hall, who earlier scampered 62 yards on a run to the left side to open the scoring, is feared to have torn his ACL, according to Jets Head Coach Robert Saleh, with further tests on Monday set up to confirm the diagnosis. In addition, New York lost its best offensive lineman (Alijah Vera-Tucker) and WR1 (Corey Davis) during the game, while WR2 Elijah Moore was sitting at home stewing over the lack of usage that triggered his request to be traded.
In other words, the Jets weren’t going to be marching up and down the field against the league’s best pass defense—not with quarterback Zach Wilson ridiculously inaccurate even when kept clean in the pocket--so points were at a premium.
Kicking through the tricky Denver winds, “Greg The Leg” connected from 45 yards out on the final play of the first half to put the Jets up, 10-9, and then booted field goals of 33 and 40 yards in the fourth quarter to extend the lead. Meanwhile, Broncos kicker Brandon McManus had all kinds of difficulties in his home stadium, pushing an extra point and a 56-yard field goal wide right.
On the season, Zuerlein is now 13-for-15 (86.7%) on field goals, including 5-for-6 from 40-49 yards and 3-of-4 on kicks of 50-plus yards, and 16-for-17 (94%) on extra points. Should he hold those conversion rates for the remaining 10 games, he would be the first Jets kicker since Myers to merely better the league averages.
Zuerlein hasn’t had an opportunity to win a game with a last-second field goal, but he did nail the deciding extra point with 22 seconds remaining to give the Jets a 31-30 miracle victory in Cleveland in Week 2. Should the Jets ever need such a dramatic kick, though, they finally have a guy in house they can trust.
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The Athletic recently posted an article on Jets situational football/game management coordinator Dan Shamash, who sits upstairs with Offensive Coordinator Mike LaFleur and advises Saleh on things like whether to go for it on fourth downs.
I may have some issues with Saleh’s end decisions, but as a Jets fan, I was thankful that the team is nowhere close to the mess that the Broncos are in that department, even after Head Coach Nathaniel Hackett added Jerry Rosburg to his staff a month ago for that very purpose.
In the second half, Denver punted three times on fourth-and-1s, including once when they were just shy of midfield. Didn’t they realize they were trailing?
Yes, backup QB Brett Rypien was under center because starter Russell Wilson was out with a hamstring injury, but the analytics were still on their side. Besides, the Jets couldn’t get out of their own way on offense either, accumulating just 107 yards in the second half. Hackett still played scared of what people would think if his club didn’t get the yard. Funny, that used to be a Jets calling card.
Denver flat out goofed in forfeiting all those possessions. According to Ben Baldwin’s “fourth down decision bot”, the Broncos’ chances of winning the game dropped about 10% because of all those punts.
Like I said last week, there’s just a lot more bad football teams than I thought there were. Credit the Jets for taking advantage.