MISSING THE CALL
Disgraceful reversal robs Jets shot at defeating rival Pats
NO one should have expected Tom Brady to buckle and crumble if the Wrongheaded Wretched Replay Call had not punched the Jets in their green-and-white gut.
But there was Austin SeferianJenkins plowing through the pylon with a 4-yard Josh McCown pass, and there were these gritty, lovable underdogs and virtually all of MetLife Stadium awash in euphoria, about to close to within 24-21 of the great Tom Brady, celebrating the Touchdown That Could Have Changed Everything with 8:24 left.
Until moments later, following the centralized replay review in New York, it became the Touchdown That Wasn’t.
Somehow, it became a fumble out of bounds in the end zone that resulted in The Touchback That Was.
Although Seferian-Jenkins briefly lost control of the ball, it never hit the ground as he tumbled. Disgraceful call. Stupid rule. It didn’t cost the Jets, 24-17 losers to the Patriots, the damn game.
“B.S. call,” Jermaine Kearse said.
It cost them a chance to win the damn game.
“I think the whole stadium felt it was wrong,” Jamal Adams said. The whole stadium was right. Apparently somebody up there hates the Jets.
A wise old Hall of Fame football philosopher told us once that there are no medals for trying, and to his credit, Seferian-Jenkins, who has rebuilt his life and career and given the Jets a threat at the position after all these years, decided there are no medals for crying, and no crying in football.
“That was a great time for me to have great ball security, and I didn’t have good enough ball security,” Seferian-Jenkins said. “I let my team down in that situation.”
He was asked if he felt like he lost control of the football.
“I feel like I scored,” SeferianJenkins said. “But at the end of the day ... they make the calls and I’ve gotta have better ball security and I’ve gotta review the tape and make sure I make the necessary corrections so that doesn’t happen again.”
And: “It comes down to me, if I take care of the ball the way I’m supposed to and I don’t let it move or anything like that, we don’t have this discussion.”
By the seventh question, Seferian-Jenkins had had enough.
“They make the calls, I play football, I need to have better ball security. If I need to run through two defenders [Malcolm Butler and Duron Harmon] instead of letting them knock me down, at the end of the day it’s my fault.”
“I’m done answering that question. If anyone has any other questions besides the touchdown-not touchdown, bad call, whatever, let’s do it.”
When you play Brady, there is absolutely no margin for error, from the zebras and from the replay official and from your quarterback.
“It was just frustration, I think we all thought it was good. It was hard, at least from what we could see in the stadium, it was hard to tell how they would overturn it,” McCown said.
It was ruled Seferian-Jenkins did not have possession of the football before the pylon.
Referee Tony Corrente: “When he lost the ball short of the goal line, he regained control, but that doesn’t mean he possesses the ball. He doesn’t possess the ball until he’s completed going to the ground now and re-controlling the ball, which he did not survive the ground, which is why it wasn’t a touchdown. Had he never lost control of the ball in the first place, you would have a touchdown.” Got it, Abbott & Costello? Who’s on first?, What’s on second? I don’t know’s on third.
“That rule, by losing possession and being a touchback, that’s hard for me to see why you ... it’s not like they gained possession,” McCown said. “It’s a difficult rule to understand, but at any rate, refs are a part of every game, and we can’t point at that and go, ‘Man, that’s the reason.’ !— There’s so many things that we have to do better, and that we hold ourselves accountable to and that’s our standard.”
McCown jumped on Brady with TD passes to Seferian-Jenkins and Jeremy Kerley and after the Pats had closed to within 14-7, he threw a dagger interception to Butler intended for Robby Anderson with 35 seconds left in the first half that enabled Brady to find Rob Gronkowski with a 2-yard TD pass to tie it.
“It was something that Rob and I gotta keep working on. ... I put that on me,” McCown said.
Then, in the third quarter, McCown, down 21-14 now, burned two timeouts on a drive that ended with a Devin McCourty interception that led to a Stephen Gostkowski field goal.
Which led to the Wrongheaded Wretched Replay Call and the Touchdown That Wasn’t.
“Sometimes they make decisions you agree with, sometimes they don’t,” McCown said. “We don’t go into every game going, ‘Man, I hope the refs show up today.’
“At the end of the day, we didn’t play well enough, and we have to play better.”
With Brady on the other side, you cannot conclude the Jets Wuz Robbed.
Here’s what you can conclude: the Jets Wuz Robbed of the chance to shock Brady and the Pats.