Watched two of my TIVO’d Jets games last night after work — the disheartening 9-0 shutout loss to the Packers, and the rather surreal overtime win against the Lions.
Gak. A split isn’t bad and Gang Green’s season record is certainly good enough at the point in the season I have now reached (still a week or so behind real time), but the Jets offense looked wretched in both games. The Packers have a good defense but not so good that they should have been able to keep the Jets off the scoreboard entirely (admittedly, they were aided by two bogus “interception” rulings on what were actually completed passes where the receiver was stripped of the ball while lying on the ground).
And the Lions game… the Lions are a lot better, definitely a team on the rise, and they pretty much dominated the Jets that entire game, except for a freak one-play TD bomb near the end of the first half. With less than four minutes left in the game, they had a seemingly insurmountable ten-point lead… and then they proceeded to give the game away. An absurd play call on the last Lions possession (a pass, when they should have run to chew up another thirty seconds off the clock) and a late hit out of bounds were the two big factors. Hey, it was a rousing come-from-behind victory, but I’m not going to delude myself that it means much. A better team than the Lions would have nailed us to the ground.
Packers and Lions both found a chink in Gang Green’s defensive armor. With Revis and Cromartie on the corners shutting down the sidelines and their top wideouts, both teams exploited the middle of the field and the matchup of their third receiver against our third DB, and had great success. Something Rex needs to work on.
Meanwhile, the Jets offense seems to have regressed badly over the bye week. Mark Sanchez especially. His accuracy and timing were way off in these two games. Of course, he wasn’t helped by receivers dropping balls all over the field… not to mention getting mugged by Packer defenders when they DID catch a pass.
Too many penalties too. Sloppy, sloppy.
But hey… they’re 6-2 as far as I’ve watched, and tied with the Pats for the AFC East. And these are things that can be fixed. I hope.
Tonight it’s the Giants/ Seahawks game for us.
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