Colts run away with Thursday night win

The good times couldn't keep rolling for the Jets as the Colts slice through Jets defense.

🗽 Good morning Jets fans and welcome to Friday’s edition of The Jets Way. We’re going to take a look at last night’s game as the Jets defense was unable to slow down Carson Wentz, Jonathan Taylor, and the Colts offense.

I was really hoping to write my second victory post within a week, but being 28-10 at half time I think the writing was on the wall early. Let’s get into it.

🏈 Game Day 🏈

New York Jets 30-45 Indianapolis Colts

📍Lucas Oil Stadium, Indianapolis

Running Away

🏈 Like a knife through hot butter, the Jets defense was ripped to pieces. Indianapolis racked up 260 yards and 3 touchdowns on the ground with Jonathan Taylor accounting for 172 of those. It’s hard to pinpoint where the issue is without seeing the coaches film, but one thing I do know is that the Indianapolis Colts offensive line dominated our defensive line and worked to the second level with ease.

Coming into the season, our run defense was supposed to be the strength of the team, but we have struggled all year. Part of it is the defensive line getting man-handled, part of it is the linebackers not plugging the gaps and over-pursuing. If there is one thing you can’t do against someone like Jonathan Taylor, it’s overpursue. He has the vision and the cut-back ability to make you pay and that’s exactly what he did last night.

There were so many issues with the Jets run defense last night, missed tackles and bad angles were all over the field.

Last night the analysts said that there would be running backs sitting at home envious of the amount of room the running backs had to work. The damning thing for the Jets is that a lot of the time, the RB wasn’t touched.

Sometimes you have to give credit to the opponent, Taylor is one of the very best running backs in the league. I’d say he’s the #2 back in the NFL behind Henry, but that was no secret heading into the game. I’m not sure what the game plan was to stop him, but whatever it was it didn’t work.

If the short ones were bad enough, the long one was the dagger. Already up 35-10 I’m not going to say this sealed the game for the Colts, as it was a long way back at that point anyway, but the angle from Ashtyn Davis on this play is absolutely dreadful, and let’s be honest, Davis has been poor all season.

I could put 15-20 plays in here to showcase how good the Colts were on the ground and how bad the Jets were defending it, but you get the point by now. I firmly believe that had the Colts wanted to, they could have barely thrown a pass all night and still walked out with a victory. This was one of the biggest mismatches of all season.

Momentum Shifter

🏈 There are two incidents that shifted the momentum in favor of the Colts for good. The first was Mike White leaving the game injured in the first quarter. Although Josh Johnson came in and played well, most of his damage was inflicted once the Colts had gained a big lead and were sitting in their shell defense, preventing the big play over the top. You still have to execute and Johnson deserves credit, but Mike White looked good to start the game and losing him was a huge blow to this Jets offense.

Here are just a couple of plays from White that I really liked, both to Elijah Moore who I thought was excellent en-route to a 7 catch, 84 yards and 2 touchdown game. We’re finally seeing the Moore that we expected to see.

I like the surveying of the field, I like that he stands in the pocket even though he knows he’s going to get drilled and I like that he delivers an absolute strike.

On the touchdown throw, it doesn’t look as though Moore is White’s first read. It’s hard without coaches’ film, but it looks as though he makes a full-field read here. First, he looks right, it’s not there, so he moves to the middle, also not there, finally to the left where there is broken coverage and an easy TD. May look very straightforward, but a full field read for a QB starting only his 2nd NFL game is not as straightforward as you’d expect, especially when the pocket is closing in around you.

The second is the turnover by Ty Johnson, and let me just say I don’t blame this on Ty Johnson at all. It’s just a superb play by all-pro Darius Leonard, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen someone punch the ball out quite like this, it’s a jab that Tyson Fury would be proud of.

Play-calling

🏈 For the second week in a row, I thought Mike LaFleur called an excellent game. The booth absolutely suits the rookie play-caller and I don’t want to see him anywhere close to the sideline for the rest of the season.

Had Mike White been in, this game is probably a shoot-out. The Colts weren’t taking away the underneath stuff and that’s where Mike is at his best. Johnson struggled when he first came into the game, which can be expected. It wasn’t until there were 3 minutes left in the 3rd quarter that we saw another TD for Jets and again it was Moore.

This is a classic Shanahan-type play, where you get the lineman sealing one way, the QB rolling the other, and the receiver coming across in the drag route. It’s a tough one to stop especially if you’re in zone. It’s a good play call and it’s well-executed.

With Corey Davis missing for a 2nd straight game, the Jets have spread the ball around much more, which suits this offense and makes it more difficult for the defense to match up with. A week after Mike White found 10 different receivers, the Jets round 11.

Love that Effort

I really love the extra effort, that’s why I’m so fond of Michael Carter. I loved this play from Ty Johnson. In the preview, I spoke about the tackling woes of the Colts and that was on show on this play. Love it.

Final Thoughts

🏈 This is a really tough defeat to take for a number of reasons.

We were coming off a great win against the Bengals and there was so much positivity around the team. Then we lose Mike White who’s had a dream week, and then the offense is let down by the defense in a big way.

Adding to the Mike White injury, we also lost Marcus Maye (again) and Tyler Kroft (again) and we’re not a deep enough to be able to lose key players.

The defense are going to have to go back to the drawing board because we have no answers for stopping the run. We also had a very quiet night in terms of making plays on the QB. Wentz was sacked just once and we didn’t have a single tackle for a loss, it’s hard for the defense to hold up on the back-end when a QB like Wentz has plenty of time to scan the field.

📊 Stat Corner 📉

The Colts had 532 total yards, which is the most they’ve had since a week 13 match-up against the Titans in 2014.

The Colts had 3 rushing TD’s of at least 20 yards for the first time in franchise history.

The Jets scored 30+ points in back-to-back games for the first time in 27 games.

Jonathan Taylor reached 22.05mph on his long TD run, that’s the fastest ball carrier speed registered this season.

Jonathan Taylor is the first Colts RB to have two rushing touchdowns of at least 20 yards since Marshall Faulk did it back in 1995.

Elijah Moore is the first Jets rookie WR to have 2+ receiving touchdowns in the same game since Stephen Hill back in 2012.

A Jets QB has now been sacked in 43 straight games, which is the longest streak in the NFL.

The Jets have now scored points in the first quarter in 2 straight games after not scoring a single point in the frst quarter in the first 6 games.

🌠 Stars of the Game 🌠

🌟 Mike White

I’m going all offense for the stars of the game this week, and it may seem straight to give one star to someone who played one quarter.

However, on national TV and having had the week he’s had, it would have been easy to come out and struggle. Outside of one pass that was too hot to handle, he was efficient and moved the offense to yet another first quarter TD.

He finished the game 7/11 for 95 yards and 1 touchdown. Had he stayed in the game, I think he has another 300+ yard game and we really are talking QB controversy.

🌟🌟 Josh Johnson

He struggled when he came in and he wasn’t able to muster much until time was ticking down in the 3rd quarter, but he put together a pretty nice finish to at least make the score semi-respectable.

I know the Colts had dropped into a shell defense and they were giving up a lot of the underneath stuff, but Johnson still executed it. He still moved the offense down the field and he still finished with over 300 yards passing and 3 touchdowns. You can’t ask for much more from your 3rd string QB.

He deserves some credit, so he’s getting by 2 stars.

🌟🌟🌟 Elijah Moore

We are seeing the Elijah Moore that we saw at Ole Miss and I’m loving every second of it.

The issue we had at the start of the season is we were targeting Elijah on those deep low percentage throws. He can absolutely do that, and we saw some incredible plays in training camp.

Moore is much better with the ball in his hands though. Get him over the middle, get him on those drag routes and crossers. Make a defender cover his route running in the middle of the field, where he doesn’t have the sideline to help out.

Elijah has had back-to-back good games, finishing this one with 7 catches (on 8 targets) for 84 yards and 2 TD’s. He gets all 3 stars and I think we’ll see him in this list a lot over the 2nd half of the season.

💬 Who Said What 💬

Mike White on his injury:

"It's frustrating, especially when the first two drives went so well, isn't the end of the road by any means"

“I felt it on the touchdown throw to Elijah”

CJ Mosley on the Colts rushing:

"It's hard to give up 260 rushing yards and win the game"

"We were just as shocked as everybody else that was watching" (on the two long TDs)

Elijah Moore on Mike White’s injury & Josh Johnson playing:

"Next man up, you know? Football brings obstacles," Moore said. "And we've got to trust in anyone who's out there, anyone who's in the building, anyone who comes in, anyone who works with us, grinds with us, puts in the blood, sweat and tears. I believe that they're ready."

Robert Saleh on the offense:

"Yeah, Elijah has had back-to-back good games," Saleh said. "The offense in general, all of them, are playing at a high level. The offensive line is doing a good job of protecting — that [Colts] line is not easy to block. The receivers are running routes at a high level, they're efficient, getting in and out of breaks, and the quarterbacks are doing a good job of getting them the football."

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