Putrid Offence Downs Jets

Edition #514

Good morning.

It’s been a long time since the Jets were known as an offensive juggernaut, but I never thought I’d long for the days of 17.4 points per game under Mike LaFleur…but here we are.

The defence held Justin Herbert to his lowest career passing yardage and sacked him 5 times, but eventually, the dam broke following a number of embarrassing offensive drives.

There is plenty of blame to go around but for now, we won’t see any changes. Robert Saleh confirmed that Nathaniel Hackett will keep calling plays, and Zach Wilson is the only option at QB.

"It's inexcusable, man, and it's getting to the point where it's disappointing," Garrett Wilson said. "I hate coming off the field, looking our defence in the eyes and knowing that we have to send them back out there after a three-and-out. Them boys are my dogs and they come out and ball. They put us in a great position. It's time for us to start returning the favour, man. It's time. We got to figure it out."

Garrett was then asked if the problems were scheme-related: "I don't know, man, I really don't know," he said. "I like to think that isn't the case and that it's truly things that we can just watch the film and be like, 'All right, we have to do this better and this will lead to a touchdown.'"

Garrett continued: "If you aren't angry, I would think something is wrong. This is disappointing and it definitely messes with your psyche a little bit, but it's nothing we can't handle. We're professionals. We're going to push through this and it's going to be better on the back end. But, yeah, I'd be lying if I said that we were all content with what we're doing out on the field because we're not."

Robert Saleh on Zach Wilson "Was it his best game? Obviously not, Was it his worst game? No, I'm not going to say it was the worst game."

Sauce Gardner on how the defence performed: "I feel like we did pretty good. I don’t even want to think about it no more. I don’t even remember what we did. I just know we were down two touchdowns early in the game. We were in the hole. And we can’t keep getting ourselves in a hole and trying to dig ourselves out of it. Especially when there’s teams we feel like we should be able to blow out. We gotta score on defense. That’s what we said we wanted to do on defense, regardless of what the offense does."

I’m just going to recap part of the preview newsletter I sent out yesterday, just to reiterate the futility of this offence:

Here’s how the Chargers defence ranked going into the game yesterday.

Points allowed per game: 24 (24th)
Opponent red-zone conversion: 57.14% (21st)
Opponent third down conversion: 37.65% (13th)
Opponent yards per game: 390.9 (31st)
Opponent yards per play: 5.9 (30th)
Opponent rushing yards per game: 93.4 (6th)
Opponent rushing yards per play: 3.8 (10th)
Opponent passing yards per game: 297.4 (32nd)

The Jets scored 6 points and failed to move the ball for the majority of the night. We picked up some garbage yards at the end that made some stats look respectable…some. But we have a very real issue that is already derailing the season.

Last week a lot of people talked about the progress of the Giants defence and how Wink was turning it around and that had to be factored into the equation. Well that same Giants defence got roasted for over 30 points and over 330 yards by an Aidan O’Connell led Las Vegas Raiders outfit.

The offensive weapons like Garrett Wilson and Breece Hall are taking full responsibility, Zach was accountable after the game as well. But changes absolutely have to be made.

I’m not sure how Robert Saleh can come out after that game and defend anything the offence did, how he can have such a public defence of the unit that is statistically the worst team in football on the offensive side of the ball.

The problem with this offence is that there is no easy solution.

Nathaniel Hackett oversaw the 32nd-ranked scoring offence last year and was fired as a result, he’s now overseeing the 32nd-ranked offence this year and has the full backing of the head coach.