Shake & Blake
Gang not even close to a match for Bortles, Jags
JACKSONVILLE – He looked like some sort of mythical figure out there, firing darts everywhere to everyone, carving up the Jets defense one painful pass at a time from jump street. Before you knew it, Gang Green was buried by this supreme being.
The Jets made Blake Bortles – yes, that Blake Bortles – look like a football god in a 31-12 beatdown loss Sunday that has Todd Bowles’ team mired in a threegame funk filled with futility.
“We made him look amazing,” linebacker Avery Williamson said. “Because we just didn’t do our jobs. Kudos to him.”
Bortles was on the marquee of an embarrassing Jets’ defeat that illustrated the cavernous divide between the haves and have-nots. The Jets were outplayed, out-coached and outeverything-ed in every imaginable way by a loaded team primed for a Super Bowl run.
“I thought we took a step back today,” Todd Bowles said. “We have to go back to the drawing board in every phase: offense, defense, special teams…. It’s not alarming. Today was the first day it happened. The other (two) games we lost on silly things, but we were in ballgames. Today, I don’t think we were in the ballgame. We didn’t give ourselves a chance.”
Bortles went 29-for-38 for a career-high 388 yards en route to a 503-yard offensive explosion that crippled Gang Green. It was the first time the Jets gave up 500 yards since the Matt Cassel-led Patriots lit them up on Nov. 13, 2008.
“We can never allow a team to get 500 yards on us ever again,” outside linebacker Jordan Jenkins said. “That was piss-poor by us.”
Bortles & Co. did whatever they damn well pleased during a suffocating first half that eliminated any doubt who had the better squad. Jacksonville scored on each of its four firsthalf possessions, picking apart a defense that looked equal parts lost and out-manned.
“If you’re not pissed off about it,” linebacker Darron Lee said, “Then there’s something wrong.”
We already knew that the Jaguars star-studded defense had superior talent, but Bowles’ defense turned Bortles into Tom Brady (or better yet… Baker Mayfield). Bortles picked apart the Jets by completing 16 of 19 passes to eight different players to help the Jaguars build a 16-0 halftime lead. It felt 160-0. There wasn’t a competitive nanosecond in this game.
Gang Green’s defense allowed an inexcusable 7.5 yards per play before halftime. Bortles must have felt like he was facing an invisible defense. To make matters worse, Jaguars workhorse Leonard Fournette had only 35 total yards before leaving late in the first half with a hamstring injury.
From a Jets perspective, the only thing more frightening than actual four- legged jaguars running free on a football field were players in a Jacksonville uniform seemingly wide open all half. The Jets had communication breakdowns (passing one defender off to another) on shallow crossers and underneath routes that proved to be killers.
“We were bad in underneath coverage for the first time this year,” Bowles said.
T.J. Yeldon’s 31-yard catch and stroll into the end zone late in the second quarter summed it all up. It was downright ugly.
Meanwhile, Sam Darnold looked like a rookie against a Pro Bowlladen defense. He threw an interception that was wiped out after a Jaguars penalty. Cornerbacks A.J. Bouye and Jalen Ramsey also dropped two easy picks thrown by the rookie.
“It’s just about executing,” said Darnold, who went 17 for 34 for 167 yards and 74.0 passer rating. “It’s not much more complicated than that.”
Darnold & Co. were allergic to third down conversions (3 for 13), which didn’t help matters. Sprinkle in Jacksonville’s pair of time-consuming scoring drives to open the game (8 min, 38 seconds and 6 min, 59 seconds) and the Jets offense never got into a rhythm. Gang Green ran only 22 plays in the first half en route to an anemic 3.5 yards per play on the day.
“Good teams just don’t do what we did out there,” said wide receiver Quincy Enunwa, who had four receptions for a team-high 66 yards. “We just have to be a smarter football team. We’re plenty athletic. We just need to be smarter.”
The Jets couldn’t punch it in the end zone after Bortles tried to gift them a touchdown. Darryl Roberts’ interception off Avery Williamson’s deflection gave the Jets the ball at the Jacksonville 23 midway through the third quarter. But the Jets had to settle for a short field goal for their first points of the day.
Donte Moncrief toasted top free-agent signing Trumaine Johnson on a 67-yard touchdown late in the third quarter to make it 25-3.
Bowles made a pair of questionable game-management decisions in the fourth quarter, too. Down 25-3, he opted to kick a field goal rather than go for it on 4th and 8 from the Jacksonville 20. The field goal cut the deficit to 19 points, but it was still a three-score game with 12:53 left in the fourth quarter.
“We (had) a lot of time to come back and get scores,”
Bowles said. “We needed some points out of that from a positive drive any way we could.”
Trailing 25-12 with 4:33 left, he chose to punt on 4th and 6 from the Jets 25 with two timeouts and the two-minute warning to stop the clock.
“If we didn’t get it then the game would have been over,” Bowles said. “With four something left and two timeouts, the defense had been getting stops despite the one long touchdown pass. We got a few turnovers, so we were trying to get the ball back in better field position and try to have two scores. Either way, we needed two scores. If we went for it and not gotten it then it would have been three scores and the game would have been over.”
If there was any lingering doubt, the game was over after the Jaguars marched 65 yards on the ensuing drive for a touchdown.
Gang Green has gone in a deep freeze since the primetime season-opening rout in Detroit. Bowles’ team has scored just 41 points in the 13 quarters since that 31-point eruption in the third quarter against the Lions.
“It’s really tough, especially with that first game,” Enunwa said of the three-game losing streak since that magical Monday night. “It kind of makes it seem like it was a fluke. And we don’t think that was, but I’m sure everybody else does.”
What else should anyone think until they prove otherwise?