Jets are no longer pushovers
A serious yet lighthearted, nostalgia tinted look at the Patriots’ weekly matchup.
It’s amazing, in a lousy kind of way, how fast the temperature has changed. Less than a week ago, the Patriots were on a modest but encouraging two-game winning streak. Their defense had posted a shutout against the Lions and followed that up by thwarting star running back Nick Chubb in beating the Browns. Rookie backup quarterback Bailey Zappe had acquitted himself well in two starts in place of the injured Mac Jones, Rhamondre Stevenson dazzled at running back, and lightning-fast rookie Tyquan Thornton seemed capable of adding a new dynamic to the offense.
Good things were happening. Trends were favorable. And with the lowly Bears up next, the Patriots were almost certain to win their third straight and get over .500 for the first time this season.
Then the unthinkable happened: The Bears throttled them, 33-14, and now nothing is certain as the Patriots hit the road to face the rejuvenated Jets.
Bears second-year quarterback Justin Fields had the game of his young career against the Patriots, running for 82 yards, passing for 179, and punching holes all over the defense.
Jones played poorly upon his return, Zappe replaced him, and after a fast start finally looked like a rookie fourth-round pick from a small school. By the end of the night, the Patriots had a full-blown quarterback controversy of their own making.
And now here come the Jets, who no longer look like they belong in the so-called soft portion of the Patriots’ schedule. Coach Robert Saleh’s young team has won four in a row, and at 5-2, the Jets are off to their best start since 2015.
They’ve had some unfortunate injury luck lately, losing superb rookie running back Breece Hall and second-year tackle Alijah Vera-Tucker to season-ending injuries last week, but it would be a mistake to underestimate them, particularly their talented defense that allows just 19.6 points per game, tied for 10th in the NFL.
And they surely will have vengeance on their minds, having lost 12 straight games to the Patriots, including a 54-13 embarrassment in the most recent meeting in Week 7 last season.
It’s not an exaggeration to suggest that this outcome could determine the shape of the Patriots’ season.
Kick it off, Bailey — Jake, not Zappe — and let’s get this thing started . . .
Three players to watch other than the quarterbacks
Quinnen Williams: No week is a good week to deal with Williams, a fourth-year tackle out of Alabama who has emerged as one of the most disruptive defensive players in the league. But this could be particularly bad timing for the Patriots because center David Andrews is dealing with a concussion suffered on a dirty blindside hit by the Bears’ Mike Pennel late in Monday’s game.
James Ferentz is a competent backup on the interior line, but he is not equipped to deal with the likes of Williams, who has been wreaking havoc all season. Williams was named the AFC Defensive Player of the Week two weeks ago after posting a stat line that looked like it belonged on Aaron Donald’s pro-football-reference.com page.
In the Jets’ win over Ayahuasca Aaron and the Packers, Williams collected two sacks, forced a fumble, made two other tackles for loss, and blocked a field goal attempt. His five-game streak with at least half a sack came to an end last Sunday in a win over the Broncos, but he still came up with four tackles, two quarterback hits, and a pass defensed.
Williams has five sacks and 13 quarterback hits this season, but he’s not just a pass-rushing presence. He also anchors a run defense that is allowing 105.3 yards per game, 11th-best in the league. Given their murky situation at quarterback, the Patriots need a strong game from Stevenson, who had just 39 yards (and a touchdown) on 11 carries against the Bears. But Williams is as formidable as roadblocks get.
Sauce Gardner: You know that hilarious YouTube video that circulates every year around NFL Draft time, the compilation of terrible Jets first-round draft choices through the years? Blair Thomas . . . Johnny Mitchell . . . Well, maybe things are starting to even out.
Since Joe Douglas was plucked from the Eagles front office to be the general manager in June 2019, a couple of months after Williams was selected No. 3 overall, the Jets have added quality young talent all over the roster.
But this year’s draft may well be Douglas’s best. With three first-round picks, the Jets selected Gardner, a lanky but super-quick cornerback from Cincinnati, at No. 4; Ohio State wide receiver Garrett Wilson at No. 10; and Florida State linebacker Jermaine Johnson at No. 26. In the second round, the Jets chose Hall, who was emerging as a fan favorite and true star before his injury.
Gardner had some buzz as being potentially the top overall prospect in the 2022 draft, and he has done nothing to dissuade anyone from that notion. The Jets haven’t had a true shutdown corner since Darrelle Revis’s heyday a decade ago, but just seven games into his career, Gardner is earning that label. He leads the NFL in passes defensed (12), while leading a secondary that allows just 209 passing yards per game, second in the league.
Gardner’s best game was his most recent one; he followed Williams as AFC Defensive Player of the Week by making 10 tackles and defending three passes in last week’s win over the Broncos. But the most memorable highlight of his rookie season might have come in the Week 6 win over the Packers at Lambeau Field when he swiped a fan’s cheesehead and put it on before a Green Bay player swatted it off.
Matthew Judon: The Jets have won all four of quarterback Zach Wilson’s starts since he returned from a knee injury that cost him the first three weeks of the season, but they’re not winning because of him. He has thrown one touchdown pass and two interceptions, all coming in his season debut against the Steelers in Week 4. In the three games since, Wilson has not thrown a touchdown pass or an interception, with offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur keeping things simple and leaning on a running game led by Hall.
But with Hall’s season over and the running game turned over to the less-inspiring Michael Carter and perhaps ex-Jaguar James Robinson, the Jets may require a little more from Wilson, which would likely make the second-year passer prone to mistakes.
He has improved this season after throwing nine touchdown passes and 11 interceptions as a rookie, but Judon — the Patriots’ lone defensive standout in the Bears debacle, with 2½ sacks — and their pass rush could force him into an afternoon of regression. Last season, Wilson was sacked five times in the two Patriots games, while throwing four interceptions, all in Week 2. It’s imperative Judon and friends jostle his bad memories early.
Grievance of the week
Most of the time when Bill Belichick has done something unusual or unorthodox during his 23 seasons as Patriots coach, a few moments of critical thinking about what his reasoning might be reveals a clear answer even when he’s not interested in supplying one.
But what’s happening with Jones and the quarterback situation defies all logic. It isn’t just senseless, it’s quite possibly detrimental.
The Patriots’ No. 1 priority entering this season should have been to make sure their second-year quarterback made progress after a productive, encouraging rookie season. Instead, Belichick and de facto offensive coordinator Matt Patricia have done nothing but drop anvils on Jones’s head and toss obstacles in his path, like a couple of playsheet-toting Wile E. Coyotes.
It began with adding elements to the playbook in training camp that didn’t play to Jones’s strengths, leading to a camp of messy practices that surely awakened some skepticism in offensive players’ minds about what they were doing and why.
Once the real games began, Patricia refused to use play-action, with the offense too often devolving into a sequence of heaved-up 50-50 balls. Jones took a beating behind a line struggling to find cohesion, having to miss postgame news conferences twice in the first five games because of injuries. When a high ankle sprain knocked him out for three games, Zappe played well in a streamlined offense.
Rather than confirming that Jones was his quarterback — the kind of controversy-halting support he gave Cam Newton after an abysmal performance against the Rams in 2020 — Belichick let a potential controversy fester by refusing to clarify anything, then made the bizarre decision to budget playing time for both Jones and Zappe entering the Bears game.
It backfired spectacularly. When Jones threw an ugly interception — something that has been a problem this year — Belichick put in Zappe, appeasing an embarrassingly short-sighted Gillette Stadium crowd that had been chanting the rookie’s name. After some early fireworks, Zappe turned in a dud of a second half when facing the escalated degree of difficulty that comes from playing from behind.
In one night, the Patriots went from looking like they had two good options at quarterback to none.
Belichick confirmed Thursday that Jones will start this one. The hope should be that he will play well and begin trending in the right direction. But at this point, if he can get through a game without his coaches doing something to make his job more difficult, that would count as a win.
Prediction, or did you know Curtis Martin rushed for 1,697 yards in his second-to-last season?
It got lost, somewhat understandably, in the who’s-the-QB-now? conversation, but the biggest disappointment in the Patriots loss to the Bears was the no-show by the defense, Judon excepted. The Bears put up 390 total yards, 243 coming on the ground, and the last time Fields looked so competent, he was wearing the colors of Ohio State.
The defense is banged up, with, among other ailments, budding star safety Kyle Dugger dealing with an ankle injury. But it should bounce back against Wilson and a Jets running game that suddenly has to dig into the depth chart. Actually, forget “should.” It had better, or this season that looked promising just a week ago will be awfully close to irreparable.
Patriots 20, Jets 16.