Bowles defends first-half early exit

Todd Bowles explained why he did not take a timeout with just over a minute left in the first half Sunday in Denver, but it probably won’t make Jets fans happy.

The situation was this: The Jets stopped the Broncos on third down at the Jets’ 35 with about 1:10 left in the half. Denver called on its fieldgoal unit. Bowles had all three timeouts left. Instead of using one and giving his offense the ball with about a minute left and two timeouts, he allowed the Broncos to run the clock down before the field goal.

After Brandon McManus made the 53-yard kick, the Jets got the ball with 32 seconds left. They took a knee.

The Broncos were up 13-0 at the time, and the Jets were receiving the second-half kickoff. Bowles felt with the Jets offense doing nothing it was not worth taking the risk of going for it at the end of the half.

“At that rate we were playing, we needed to go in and regroup,” Bowles explained.

That is a puzzling way to look at it with that much time left on the clock. It would be understandable if there were only 30 seconds left, but the offense could have possibly gotten into field-goal range in a minute and with two timeouts.

Josh McCown had also been dealing with a hip injury he suffered earlier in the quarter.

“Josh was pretty banged up right there,” Bowles said. “The best thing we could do getting the ball in the second half was take a knee and let him heal up and go back out in the second half.”

WR Jeremy Kerley is eligible to return to the Jets this week after serving his four-game PED suspension. But Bowles sounded like the Jets are not sure if they want to welcome Kerley back.

“There’s things we’ve got to discuss that we haven’t made decisions on yet,” Bowles said. “I’ll let you guys know Wednesday.”

Rooki e Chad Ha n sen has played a lot in Kerley’s absence and had some good moments last week against the Chiefs. Bringing Kerley back could stunt Hansen’s development.