Let Down Lions

Edition #287

Good morning!

Deflated. That’s the word that comes to mind as I sit here at 7 am and write today’s newsletter. As always after a loss, I wanted to sleep on it to try and take the emotions away and be as far as possible, but I woke up this morning feeling deflated. That was yet another game the Jets should have won.

The Raiders helped the Jets by defeating the Patriots last night (In hilarious fashion, if you’ve not seen the Patriot’s final offensive play that led to a Raiders TD, stop reading this and go and watch it, it’ll cheer you up), but the Chargers pulled off a 17-14 win against the Titans to move to 8-6 and move a game ahead of the Jets.

The Jets are still in the mix, there’s one game between us and the Dolphins and we still have to face them this year. With all the tiebreakers and permutations there are some rolls of the dice that will need to go our way, but at least we’re still there.

But, one thing we’ll likely need to do is win out from here. With Jacksonville, Seattle and Miami still to come, that is possible, but the Jets are in a funk right now. We’ve now lost 3 in a row and 4 of our last 5 games.

"I can probably look back at it and say we should’ve used one, for sure. But at the same time, when you have 3 timeouts, time is not an issue whether you use one there or not. But, yeah, in hindsight for me, I could’ve called a timeout to settle the guys down." - Saleh on the clock management, which was pretty atrocious on that final drive.

DJ Reed on Lion’s 4th down TD: "We have a top defense in the NFL. We put that on our chest and we’ll take that to the chin...Obviously, we're all devastated." - He said they’d never run that play before and Sheldon Rankins said on film their tendency was a QB sneak.

According to ESPN stats and information, Brock Wright's 51-yard TD was the longest Rec TD by a Lions tight end since 1999, when David Sloan had a 74-yard score against the Packers. Wright's TD was also the 2nd-longest go-ahead 4th-down touchdown in the final 2 minutes of a game in the last 20 seasons (Odell Beckham Jr: 66-yard Rec TD for Giants vs Ravens in 2016).

Garrett Wilson talked about starting 5-2 before finding themselves 7-7 after yesterday’s loss: “We started fast. None of that matters when you don’t finish.”

Zach Wilson was asked if he deserved another start and he said “That’s not up to me.” - He did show some accountability at the end which was great to see, saying he made a bad decision on the INT which cost his team 3 points, which ended up being the margin of defeat.

Lions 20-17 Jets

Whenever a team with a worse record than yours comes into your building, if you have playoff aspirations, you need to beat them. That to me is the simple principle of football in December. I tweeted early in the game that I thought the Jets came out flat yesterday and that carried throughout the game, even when we took the lead it never felt comfortable.

Here’s something else that’s unavoidable:

Detroit on average score 26.8 points per game. The Jets Defense limited them to 10 points.

Detroit on average allows 26.7 points per game. They limited the Jets to 17.

So if you work to the averages, the Jet’s defense was +16.8 and the Jet’s offense was -9.7 and that to me was the story of the game.

Obviously, we need to focus on the defensive breakdown that surrendered the lead in the 4th quarter. I’ve watched it a hundred times and I still can’t work out whose responsibility Brock Wright was, the Jets were in man coverage and most blamed CJ - but looking at it, it seems as though it may have been Quincy’s man with CJ designed to take the back who stays in.

Regardless it was a defensive breakdown which cost the Jets 7 points, it was disappointing, and devastating as DJ Reed called it, but I’m not going to sit here and place the blame on the defense. I just can’t do it.

The Lions put 34 points on the Vikings, 40 points on the Jaguars, 25 points on the Bills, and 31 points on the Giants, and that was just over the last month. They put 17 points on the Jets and only 10 points on the defense. Yes, it was disappointing that this happened, even more so in the 4th quarter to surrender a lead, but if you expect your defense to pitch a shutout for a victory, you’re going to end up disappointed more often than not.

This loss was not on the defense, at least in my opinion.

The issue for me is that as the home team, against a defense that is ranked #31 in scoring defense allowing on average 26.7 points per game, the Jets offense managed just 17 points. We forget we had Garrett Wilson for 3 quarters, which happens more often than it should and our run game was nonexistent.

Bam Knight got injured, but even before that the Jets were getting absolutely no purchase up-front and that’s because the Lions sold out to stop the run. The Jets had 50 yards rushing in total, which was bad for 2.3 yards per play. Aaron Glenn and the Detroit defense stacked the box, challenging Wilson and the Jets passing attack to beat them through the air and we couldn’t.

Zach Wilson had an up-and-down game. He threw for over 300 yards which was good to see and had a couple of touchdown passes and made some plays down the field. But he only completed 51.4% of his passes against one of the worst passing defenses in the league, threw an awful interception that cost the team points, threw up another one that should have been picked if not for Michael Carter turning into Michael Jordon, and missed so many throws to open receivers with bad mechanics and back foot throws, along with the weekly bounce pass in the flat. Garrett became visibly frustrated in the 2nd half when he beat his man and Wilson overthrew him.

I’m not going to place the blame for this loss on Wilson, it was a collective loss on the offense and special teams units as a whole, but if Mike White is healthy then he needs to start against Jacksonville. A lot of people were saying how the Lions were awful and it was yet another easy defense for White, well we need to keep that energy for Wilson as well. Wilson’s 51.4% completion was the lowest completion percentage against this defense all season and if it really is about points, then scoring 9.7 points under the average is not good enough, regardless of who the QB is.

But I’ll say this for Zach, he made some big-time throws in that 4th quarter to give the Jets a chance to tie the game, and that for me was progress. I know he went 3-7 and took two sacks which can’t happen in that situation, but he also connected on a couple of darts. He also said after the game that he “needs to be better” which shows some real accountability that was absent earlier in the season, so in that regard, we’ve seen some growth.

Now we do need to get onto special teams as Braden Mann absolutely has to face competition this off-season. If you were a subscriber to TJW over the off-season you’ll have remembered that I was pretty amazed that the Jets never brought in real competition for Mann. Last season he wasn’t good enough to receive job security, and this year he’s arguably been worse.

I’m not going to sit here and say he’s the worst punter in the league because he isn’t. But he’s a below-average punter and seems to shrink in stature when the pressure is on. He out-punted the coverage against the Patriots and it was returned for a game-winning TD, he out-punted the coverage against the Lions and it was returned for a touchdown, he shanked a kick against Baltimore and that turned into a touchdown.

The funny thing is that Braden Mann’s hangtime of 4.36 is actually 13th, so above average. The issue is situational football, his mistakes often come at the worst times and in the worst field position. A lot of people were calling for Mann to be cut yesterday, and while I’m not going that far I am saying that the Jets need to look for alternatives. Punter is like every other position in football, if you don’t have the best one then you should always be looking to improve.

The Jets will now head into Jacksonville on a short week with the Jaguars coming off a win over the Cowboys where Trevor Lawrence scored 4 touchdowns while throwing for over 300 yards, and completing 64% of passes against one of the best defenses in football. The Jaguar’s defense did allow 34 points to Dallas and they’re currently ranked 27th, allowing 370.7 yards per game. They also allow on average 23.4 points per game (21st), so the Jets offense will get another good matchup to try and keep the playoff hopes alive.