McCown unable to repeat 2017 magic

The calls for Josh McCown to give Sam Darnold a breather were getting louder even before the Jets rookie quarterback sprained his right foot.

But not even the veteran’s touch could do anything to revive a dead offense.

McCown was ineffective in his first start since last season, failing to get the offense moving in a 41-10 loss to the Bills on Sunday at MetLife Stadium.

The 39-year-old completed 17-of-34 passes for 135 yards and two interceptions. That he had looked like a “spring chicken” — Todd Bowles’ words on Friday — made no difference at all in the battle to score points.

“I think the effort is there. I just think it’s execution,” McCown said. “We’ve got to go out and play better. You look around the field today and I don’t know if there was one bright spot for us. We just didn’t play well, everybody, to a man. We have to be better and that’s really all you can say about it.”

While Darnold had struggled in his last few games before the injury, which kept him in a boot all week and out of practice, McCown’s passing yards were the fewest the Jets had thrown for all season.

The Jets’ leading receiver was Quincy Enunwa, who caught four passes for 18 yards. But McCown had targeted him eight times, with multiple passes getting batted down at the line of scrimmage.

“They just did a good job of getting their hands up,” McCown said. “We’d like to, obviously, avoid those. They did a good job of knocking that down. We want to get the ball [in] Q’s hands as much as we can and they weren’t going to let that happen.”

Bowles would not offer an assessment of McCown’s performance.

“Everybody played bad,” Bowles said. “Everybody coached bad.”

The coach said he did not consider putting Davis Webb — freshly promoted from the practice squad on Saturday — into the game late.

McCown, who had his season cut short last year by a broken hand in Week 14, finally led the Jets into the end zone in the third quarter. Isaiah Crowell scored on a 5-yard run to cap off a seven-play, 73-yard scoring drive that snapped a streak of 22 possessions without a touchdown.

“Obviously we had some big runs, big chunk runs going and converted some third downs and that was just how we planned on playing the whole game,” McCown said. “We weren’t able to get that done in the other series.”