FUMBLE SCREWSKI!
Jets miss shot for first place on crazy review call
Move over “Buttfumble,” here comes the “Whatfumble.”
The Jets lost 24-17 to the Patriots on Sunday in a close game that swung on a few plays, none bigger than a controversial call in the fourth quarter that took a touchdown away from the Jets.
Jets tight end Austin SeferianJenkins initially was ruled to have scored a 4-yard touchdown on a pass from Josh McCown with 8:31 left in the game. The touchdown would have cut the Patriots’ lead to 24-21 with plenty of time to play. Instead, the call was overturned on a review and changed to a fumble.
NFL vice president of officiating Al Riveron in the New York replay center, in consultation with referee Tony Corrente, ruled Seferian-Jenkins lost control of the ball before he crossed the goal line after getting hit by Patriots cornerback Malcolm Butler and safety Duron Harmon, and did not regain control until he hit the ground out of bounds. That means it is a fumble out of bounds in the end zone, giving the Patriots the ball at the 20.
“He lost the ball,” referee Tony Corrente told a pool reporter. “It came out of his control as he was almost to the ground. Now he regrasps the ball and by rule, now he has to complete the process of a recovery, which means he has to survive the ground again. So in recovering it, he recovered, hit the knee, started to roll and the ball came out a second time. So the ball started to move in his hands this way … he’s now out of bounds in the end zone, which now created a touchback. So he didn’t survive the recovery and didn’t survive the ground during the recovery is what happened here.”
The call did not go over well in the Jets’ locker room.
“When you look at the replay, I thought it was a BS call,” wide receiver Jermaine Kearse said. “But at the end of the day when you play teams like that, you got to just beat ’em. You can’t rely on small calls like that. I’m pretty sure everybody is going to look back and say that was a BS call.”
Seferian-Jenkins took the high road, saying he respected the refs’ call.
“I let my team down in that situation,” he said. “Next time I have to have better ball security.”
The play was one of a few that did not go the Jets’ way and ended up costing them the game — and first place in the AFC East. The other plays were products of Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski or Jets failures, though, and easier to swallow than an official’s call.
The Jets squandered an early 14-0 lead and saw their three-game winning streak come to an end. They are now 3-3, one game behind the 4-2 Patriots.
The game was closer than many predicted and the Jets may have proven something to their doubters. These were not the Browns or Jaguars, and the Jets went toe-to-toe with the Patriots. Still, a few plays left them on the losing end.
“We played hard, but we lost the game,” Jets coach Todd Bowles said. “No moral victories.”
The Jets jumped out to a quick 14-0 lead on touchdown passes from McCown to Seferian-Jenkins and Jeremy Kerley. Things swung in the Patriots’ direction in the second quarter. Cornerback Buster Skrine dropped what would have been an interception from Brady that could have set the Jets up for a 21-0 lead. Instead, Brady marched New England down the field, helped by an end-zone pass interference call against Jets rookie Jamal Adams that put the ball at the 1. Dion Lewis ran it in from there.
McCown then gave Brady another chance when he threw an interception to Butler with 35 seconds left in the half. Brady went 63 yards in six plays, connecting with Gronkowski for a 2-yard touchdown to tie the game 14-14 at half.
“That was very costly,” McCown said of the interception. “You can’t give Tom and those guys that many chances.”
The Patriots opened the third quarter with another Brady-toGronkowski touchdown, this one 33 yards to take a 21-14 lead. Brady completed 20-of-38 passes for 257 yards, two touchdowns and one interception. Gronkowski had six catches for 83 yards and the two scores.
Another McCown interception, this one on a fourth-and-1, started a Patriots scoring drive that ended with a 28-yard field goal from Stephen Gostkowski. McCown went 31-for-47 for 354 yards, two touchdowns and two interceptions.
At 24-14, the game felt over, but the Jets kept battling. They launched a 12-play drive that ended with the Seferian-Jenkins touchdown that wasn’t. The Jets did score one more time — a 28-yard field goal by Chandler Catanzaro. On their final drive, they made it to the Patriots’ 43 before failing to convert.
“They made more plays than u s ,” Bowles said. “We fought hard , but that’s not go o d enough. They made more plays than us. We have to be disciplined and more on-task. We have no time to sulk. We have another division rival [Dolphins] next week and we have to go on the road. We’ll correct our mistakes and move on.”