Jets Went Back To Seeing Red, As In Stop, In “Gold Zone” Opportunities
Heading into last Sunday’s game in Denver, there was reason to be hopeful that the Jets had ironed out some of their earlier difficulties with breaching the goal line when inside the red zone. New York scored touchdowns on three of four red zone trips in their previous contests versus New England and Kansas City by utilizing a diverse call sheet.
For whatever reason, that all went out the window against the Broncos. Despite escaping with a 31-21 victory, New York’s red zone inadequacies were cringeworthy. Five trips ended in four Greg Zuerlein field goals and an infamous clock management botching at the end of the first half, when the Jets couldn’t spike the ball in time to get Zuerlein on the field before the gun sounded. Such futility sent New York plummeting down to 31st in the NFL red zone touchdown efficiency rankings at 30.77%, ahead of only Pittsburgh and its beleaguered Offensive Coordinator Matt Canada.
During HBO’s “Hard Knocks” series, we learned that Jets OC Nathaniel Hackett prefers calling the area inside the opponent’s 20-yard line as “The Gold Zone,” out of his adoration of the Mike Meyers movie “Austin Powers in Goldmember.” However, with the way Hackett called plays on Sunday, you would have thought that the end zone was filled with snakes instead of gold.
On each of the 1st-and-10s on the series of downs immediately preceding the field goal attempts, Hackett called for handoffs to running back Breece Hall. The results: six total yards, two of which were negated by a holding penalty that set the Jets back further. Two of the sequences went run, run, dropback, which put the onus on quarterback Zach Wilson to convert a 3rd-and-goal into a crowded secondary. As I wrote in my previous Jets post, I don’t recall a single instance where the risk-averse Wilson actually threw the ball into the end zone. On these sequences’ checkdowns, he still went just 1-for-5 for 4 yards and a sack taken.
Maybe the Jets played it safe because Denver is a below-average team that often implodes. That was still dangerous, because A) So are the Jets, and B) The Broncos did have the ball with a chance to win the game late or tie it with a field goal—it took a Quincy Williams strip sack/Bryce Hall return touchdown to seal the win. For the record, Hackett, when pressed on the red zone topic during Thursday’s media session, actually said that “whether you call a run or a pass, I think that that’s all aggressive,” because the running game requires “physicality.” He pointed to how well New York’s running game was working all game, amassing a season-high 234 yards.
Holy cow. When Hackett says stuff like that, I wonder whether he time-travelled in to this gig from 1974. Never mind that every statistic proves that passing generates greater yards per play and expected points added per play than handoffs, running the ball near the goal line, where defenses already line up in a loaded box, is not the same as in other areas of the field. Hence, passing, though it comes with increased risk of negative outcomes, is considered more aggressive.
If Jets Head Coach Robert Saleh and Hackett think they can get away with the same conservative principles in the red zone on Sunday against the visiting Eagles (5-0), they’re delusional. Moving the ball against the defending NFC champions will be difficult enough—Philly has surrendered the fewest rushing yards per game and fourth-lowest yards per carry in the league--when Wilson & Co. do, they won’t be able to afford leaving points on the table.
If there’s one area where Wilson hasn’t been awful this season, it’s throwing off play action. He’s had some nice deliveries after sending the defense in one direction with the fake handoff and then curling out to find time to survey the field. Per ProFootballFocus.com, he has completed 67.9% of his throws off that concept for an average yards per play of 7.2 with two touchdowns and zero interceptions. On straight dropbacks, his numbers plummet to 59.5% completion percentage, 5.9 yards per attempt, and two touchdowns with five interceptions.
So why has play-action been used on just 17.9% of Wilson’s dropbacks this season, the 10th-fewest among the 36 NFL quarterbacks with at least 25 dropbacks? Want to know how many times Hackett dialed those up last Sunday? Three, which all resulted in completions totaling 37 yards. When you’re running the ball as well as the Jets did last Sunday, Hackett’s refusal to call even one 1st-and-10 play-action pass in the aforementioned series of red-zone downs seemed downright negligent.
Worse, it suggests a backwards thinking process. Their theory goes that running the ball on early downs helps Wilson get into “manageable” third downs, when it’s those situations that create the most stress. Some experts believe that converting 3rd-and-goals from outside the 5-yard line is one of any QB’s toughest challenges.
Sunday’s affair has all the makings of a one-sided schedule loss for the Jets, but so did the Week 4 game against the Chiefs. Yet New York (2-3) made it a toss-up in the fourth quarter by taking the training wheels off Wilson. In all three red zone trips, Hackett was aggressive (by everyone else’s definition), and Wilson responded with a pair of short TD passes, the last one a 10-yard bullet to wide receiver Allen Lazard in the end zone that tied the game at 20-20.
That Kansas City eventually held on for a 23-20 win is immaterial for this analysis. That game showed the benefits of what happens when Hackett doesn’t see red, as in stop, when his club enters the “Gold Zone.”
Prediction: Eagles 33 Jets 16
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