'GHOST'-ED
Darnold, Gase in waking nightmare as Patriots haunt once-hopeful Jets
THIS was vintage cruelty from Bill Belichick, undressing Sad Sam Darnold and leaving him naked to the football world as an anxiety-riddled, shell-shocked, panic-stricken mess.
This was Sam Darnold’s nightmare, his personal buttfumble and buttinterception amateur hour.
Darnold (four INTs, one fumble, one safety) played as if he had contracted gangrene in his second game back from mononucleosis.
It was difficult to tell whether he had caught it from his defense or his defense had caught it from him during a disgraceful 33-0 defeat to the Patriots.
“I’m seeing ghosts,” Darnold was heard saying on the Jets bench. Remind him never to be mic’d up again when playing Belichick and his remorseless, merciless killing machine. Especially behind a sad-sack offensive line that couldn’t stop betraying him. None of them were Casper the friendly ghost. “I just gotta see the field a lot better, that’s kinda what that means,” Darnold said. “It was a rough day out there, rough night out there, and obviously I gotta be better and learn from the mistakes, but we will get better, no doubt.”
It was a little after midnight when Darnold faced the music in the back of the Jets locker room after what he called “one of ” the worst performances of his life.
“I definitely think I was pressing too hard,” Darnold said, “trying to get a 24-point score in one play. I just gotta take it one play at a time and continue to play the game the way it’s meant to be played.”
In the face of a blitz, Darnold looked for Le’Veon Bell and threw a rushed interception to Devin McCourty on his first pass of the night.
“That’s the one I’d like to have back, ’ cause if I don’t throw that I feel like it is a different game,” Darnold said.
From the New England 19, he threw off his back foot for Thomas and Duron Harmon had himself an easy interception at the 1.
A zero blitz from McCourty resulted in another frantic throw from Darnold off his back foot that Stephon Gilmore intercepted.
Another unfriendly ghost produced an endzone pick for Terrence Brooks.
“They we’re bringing more hits than we can block ... it’s up to us, or up to me, really, to spit the ball out,” Darnold said.
Great Caesar’s ghost. “Probably was feeling like guys were coming free when they might not have been,” Adam Gase said.
This was Darnold’s 16th NFL start and he’ll have to begin making that second-year leap against a different coach and a different team. Gase thought about pulling him, but kept holding out hope for something, anything positive.
“He didn’t have any rhythm tonight,” Gase said. His quarterback rating? 3.6. He suffered the ignominy of batting the ball out of the end zone for a safety following a high snap off his hands from Ryan Kalil.
There is always a danger that a young quarterback can suffer lasting damage to his psyche, but Darnold isn’t wired like that.
“I’m gonna put this behind me after [Tuesday] and I’ll watch the tape. ... Outside noise doesn’t bother me at all, people are gonna say what they want,” Darnold said.
It was Supermen versus boys, and you can kiss another New York football season goodbye.
This was the heavyweight champion of the world toying with a tomato-can sparring partner.
Pats versus doormats. Monday Night Massacre.
Remember how proud the 1-5 Jets were after surviving the Cowboys when they finally showed they could finish? On this night, they forgot to start. Belichick delivered a prime-time clinic on how a Hall of Fame coach gets his team prepared to play.
It was already Patriots 17, Jets 0 when Kyle Van Noy recovered John Simon’s strip-sack of Darnold at the NYJ 38 only 59 seconds into the second quarter, and soon it was 24-0, because Gregg Williams’ boys were either soft, clueless, intimidated, undisciplined or all of the above.
Brady had made it 17-0 with a 22-yard TD pass to Phillip Dorsett against Trumaine Johnson, and made an emphatic statement on the game’s first possession: a demoralizing 16-play, 78-yard drive that consumed 8:47.
Darnold didn’t know at the time how lucky he was to be standing on the sideline.
And Brady? He’d come out of retirement to play these Jets — if he ever decides to retire.
It was as if Belichick played the part of Chazz Palminteri in the scene from “A Bronx Tale” where he locks the door behind him and tells a group of mortified intruders: “Now youz can’t leave.” On this night, he was looking at Sam Darnold when he said it.