Victory Monday

Edition #509

Good morning!

In the NFL you have to enjoy your victories, especially if you’re a Jets fan as we haven’t seen that many over the last few years.

But after watching that game I messaged a few friends with the simple comments “The Jets/Giants game may have been the worst advert for the NFL in recent memory”

Let’s get into it all.

The Jets defence allowed -9 net passing yards. It’s only the second time in franchise history that they’ve kept the opposition to negative net passing yards, the other time was all the way back in 1982. It’s just the 6th time since 2000 that a team has held an opponent to negative passing yards and the -9 is tied for the fewest allowed in NFL history.

The Jets also held the Giants to just 194 net yards, this is the first time we’ve held an opponent to under 200 yards since 2018, that year we held Miami to 168 yards.

Bryce Huff now has sacks in three straight games, that’s the second consecutive year where he’s achieved that. The last Jets player to have back-to-back seasons with 3 straight games with a sack was Quinton Coples back in 2012-2013.

Quincy Williams recorded a tackle for loss for the 5th game in a row, which is tied for the longest active streak in the NFL.

Williams and Mosley each have 71 tackles, which means the Jets are the only team in football to have two players currently on over 70 tackles.

That was the first time that Thomas Morestead had managed to down 3 punts inside the 5-yard line in the same game. He’s the first Jets punter to ever do that, and just the 15th punter to do it since 1970. When you think about how many punts there are, that’s a remarkable stat.

Greg Zuerlein has now made at least one FG in 26 games in a row, the longest active streak in the NFL.

The last time the Jets had a walk-off field goal was in 2019.

Breece Hall now has 5 plays from scrimmage of 50+ yards since the start of last season. No RB has more, despite Breece playing in only 14 games.

Jermaine Johnson recorded his first multi-sack game of his career, he now has 4 sacks on the season.

Injury wise it doesn’t look good. Al Woods has a confirmed Achilles tear so he’s out for the year. Connor McGovern left with a cast on his leg and Wes Schweitzer was in a boot and on crutches. Last week Robert Saleh said that Joe Tippmann was a fast healer, and he certainly needs to be. This line is in serious trouble yet again.

Here’s the good news, we’re 4-3 and we somehow managed to turn a game where the Giants had a 98% chance of winning, into a Jets victory. That shows a ton of resilience, a ton of fight and late-game execution. Those are all good things to have in the NFL, but make no mistake about it, the way we’re playing is unsustainable for a playoff team.

As we mentioned in the quick throws the defense did their job. Sure they were playing a third-string UDFA for much of the game, but you can only play what’s in front of you. Holding the Giants to under 200 yards is a huge positive, and outside that one touchdown drive to start the third quarter, the defence did a great job throughout. Quincy Williams's personal foul was a BS call, but Jermaine Johnson has to be better in that situation. I love JJ and he’s really coming into his own, he made it up with a couple of big sacks, but those personal foul drive-extending plays will absolutely destroy your momentum, and had it not been for a missed Graham Gano field goal…the Jets walk out with a loss against a very very poor team.

I have to credit the pure athleticism of Will McDonald here, who gets up and over the line to disrupt Gano. If you’re a kicker, you’re going to see that in your peripherals. He’s not getting as much run as a defensive lineman as you’d expect from a first-round pick but he’s finding ways to make impact plays.

Jermaine Johnson, Bryce Huff, Will McDonald and JFM are the future at edge for the Jets and that will be as strong a foursome as you’ll find in the NFL when the first three-hit their peak. I do think that JFM is so underappreciated, he does a lot of grunt work and his ability against the run is underplayed by pretty much everyone.

So now we’ve spoken about the defence. We know they’re going to keep us in the game, and we know we have a unit that the opposition is scared of, whether it’s Patrick Mahomes, Jalen Hurts or Tommy DeVito, it’s hard to score points on this Jets unit.

But the offence…now that is another story.

We’ve read this story before, but the offence is letting the defence and special teams down in a major way right now. The conditions were poor and we lost some key guys up front which caused protection issues, but this offence absolutely stunk for 59 minutes of that game.

We’re fortunate that we have Breece Hall, who can do this. Although I imagine Wink Martindale is having absolute fits watching that this morning.

The game had more punts (24) than points (23).

You guys always know the stats heading into the game. The Jets were right at the bottom of two key statistics, red-zone percentage conversion and third-down conversion. If you want to be a playoff team you can’t be at the bottom of those rankings.

The Jets were 0/2 in the red zone (0%) and 2/15 on third down (13%). We had just two first downs rushing the football all night and with the Giants handing the ball off every down, they dominated the possession stats 38:13 to 25:38.

Robert Saleh was asked about it and he obviously wasn’t happy. Nathaniel Hackett was asked about it in the week and he said the third down offence sucked…well there were no improvements and the blame is absolutely across the board. Zach’s internal timing is really bad and I’m not even talking about that 4th down sack that he took, the line’s blocking was all over the place which is understandable considering the changes, but this isn’t a Giants game issue, this is a season issue. The play-calling is still extremely confusing to me, going empty on 3rd and 1 etc. You can do a lot of things with Aaron Rodgers at QB, you can’t do the same things with Zach Wilson at QB and I’m not sure the Jets have adapted their philosophy or plan enough.

I am getting to a point where I think we need to see Todd Downing call the plays, how many weeks are we going to give his 32nd-ranked unit to improve before making a change? Until we lose multiple games and our playoff opportunities are hanging by a thread? Whatever we’re doing isn’t working, we had two weeks to plan for the Giants and we finished with a 13% conversion rate on third down.

Struggling after the bye week is nothing new though, this was the first win following a bye in 8 years for the Jets, which is just absolutely shocking. We seem to be the only team who suffers from having a rest.

You have to give the offence credit for coming down the field and securing the victory, but it seems as though unless we’re in that emergency hurry-up offence, we can’t do much of anything. Maybe we should play as if there are 30 seconds left on the clock continuously through the game?

I have a lot of respect for Guard Xavier Newman who went from a practice squad call-up to having to play a position he’s never played in a live game. There were snap issues, but what can you expect from the guy? He stepped up when the Jets needed him, but you can’t go into the Chargers game with this line. We need to find help somewhere, anywhere. Hopefully, Joe Tippmann returns, but if he’s not ready you have to get on the phone to get some interior help.

Let’s all take a breath and enjoy that one…but we have so many things to fix…and not a lot of time to fix it in.