Sunday’s Cringeworthy Loss To Lions Was A Familiar Tale For Same Old Jets
Go ahead. Shout it from the top of your lungs. They’ve earned it.
Same Old Jets.
It’s the appropriate invective for whenever Jets fans reach for a semblance of hope, because this franchise always finds a way to crush it.
The 2022 version isn’t officially closed, but their cringeworthy 20-17 loss to visiting Detroit on Sunday showed that the Jets (7-7) are as likely to drop their final three games, starting Thursday versus visiting Jacksonville, as they are to win out and pray for tiebreaker luck to end their 12-year playoff drought, the NFL’s longest current streak.
Lured in by Gang Green’s shocking 6-3 start that was capped off with a rousing upset of AFC East titan Buffalo, were you? Well, Lucy pulled the football from Charlie Brown again. The Jets have gone 1-4 since, the sole victory over a Bears squad that started the awful Trevor Siemian at QB.
Meanwhile, it’s looking more and more like the Jets have wasted yet another season where they can’t cross their own “Develop a franchise quarterback” task off their open items list. And the hot start notwithstanding, their Head Coach hasn’t passed all the tests either.
Just like it’s been for nearly all of the last half century-plus.
Sunday’s game was a microcosm of what it’s like to be a Jets fan, with all the teases and tortures neatly packaged into one devastating defeat. Start off slow, display a promising second quarter to go into halftime tied, gift the Lions three points off an egregious Zach Wilson interception, take the lead late in the fourth quarter--only to immediately lose it with an incomprehensible defensive breakdown before falling short on a last-second missed field goal following awful end-game clock management.
Does that cover it?
Detroit’s game-winner, a 51-yard catch-and-rumble by backup tight end Brock Wright, who entered the contest with 13 receptions for 141 yards in 13 games this season, on the first play after the two-minute warning might as well have been broadcast in slow motion. The Jets were completely fooled on the 4th-and-1, with defenders flooding to Detroit’s right side on quarterback Jared Goff’s play-action fake.
It was bad enough that the only Jets defender in the frame when Wright caught the ball was on the opposite side of the field, but then allowing him to run over 40 yards downfield untouched from someone chasing him down from the back side was downright embarrassing. Per ESPN, it was the second-longest go-ahead touchdown on a fourth down inside the last two minutes of any game in 20 years.
Still, 1:49 is an eternity for an NFL team needing just a field goal to stay alive. I guess, though, it was too much time for Jets Head Coach Robert Saleh’s liking, because he held onto his three timeouts like death.
Saleh let the clock wind down 15 seconds after a Wilson sack, 20 seconds after a massive 22-yard completion to rookie wide receiver Garrett Wilson on a third-and-19, and then 20 more seconds after another Wilson-to-Wilson connection for 10 yards (albeit Saleh may have wanted to preempt a spot review that could have put the Jets in third down). It was only after Wilson was sacked with 19 seconds remaining that Saleh burned his first timeout. By that time, the Jets’ drive had netted all of 15 yards in 1:30.
Saleh was lucky that the refs allowed him to stop the clock at :01 after a miraculous fourth-and-18 conversion to Elijah Moore, giving the Jets just enough time to get off one more snap for a Greg Zuerlein 58-yard field goal attempt. Zuerlein, who hit from 60 yards out two weeks ago in Minnesota, hooked it wide left. Fortunately, Saleh could go home and cuddle with that unused timeout that might have allowed Zuerlein to have gotten a little closer.
Saleh and his staff have received appropriate credit for this team’s overachievement based on preseason expectations. However, in this slump, their conservative principles were never going to have sustained success.
The Lions are known as one of the worst pass coverage teams in the league, so of course the Jets came out looking to establish the run against an 8-man box (RIP Mike Leach), putting Wilson, in his first game following a three-week “reset” in difficult situations.
Jets Offensive Coordinator Mike LaFleur opened things up at the beginning of the second quarter, calling pass plays that had Wilson on the move. Boom, a 33-yard hook-up to Garrett Wilson after a rollout to Zach Wilson’s right. That was followed up by a bow to Wilson’s Pro Day at BYU before the Jets selected him No. 2 overall in the 2021 NFL Draft, where he rolled left and threw a nice deep ball across the field into the hands of tight end C.J. Uzomah for a 40-yard touchdown.
When the Jets regained possession for the final 25 seconds of the half backed up at their own 19-yard line, LaFleur, stunning all of Jets Nation who expected Wilson to take a knee, dialed up a bomb to Jeff Smith that went for 50 yards. It helped set up a 34-yard Zuerlein field goal before the halftime gun.
You’d think that after Wilson put up 164 yards in the quarter that the Jets had figured out what it would take to win this game. Well, after Wilson didn’t properly read the Lions’ coverage on New York’s opening second-half possession, lofting a pass that landed right into the arms of defensive back Jerry Jacobs, LaFleur got spooked. His next three first-down play calls were all runs, which gained a total of nine yards, and the Jets punted on three straight possessions. Per RBSDM.com, the Jets sported the fifth-worst expected points added per rush attempt on first downs in the 14 games surveyed this week as of this writing. Keeping pounding that square peg into that round hole, Jets.
I keep telling you readers that when you don’t trust your QB, you put your team at a huge risk from a single late-game mistake. In New England, Wilson’s last game before he was benched for Mike White, it was a last-second punt return. On Sunday, since White was inactive with broken ribs, giving the job back to Wilson, it was a botched coverage.
Jets’ heartbreakers are all too familiar a story, a tale as old as I am. Same Old Jets.