JETS FEELING BLEW
Hard to turn page after epic fail, but Todd says get over it
Todd Bowles enforces a strict 24-hour rule at One Jets Drive. By Tuesday, any discussion or dissection of the previous week’s game must be complete.
“Win, lose or draw,” Bowles says, “we come back in, watch the film, correct it, and we move on to the next opponent.”
This week, though, that process — moving on and forgetting — will be significantly more difficult, after the Jets collapsed in epic fashion down the stretch of Sunday’s 31-28 loss at the Dolphins. The Jets blew a 14-point fourthquarter lead. The last time they squandered a lead of that size in the fourth quarter was Week 2 of 1995. Rich Kotite was head coach.
Everything seemed to go wrong for the Jets in the final quarter Sunday. Most notably, starter Josh McCown threw an interception deep in his own territory with 39 seconds remaining, setting up Cody Parkey’s game-winning field goal.
On Monday’s conference calls, McCown sounded determined to shift his focus to next weekend’s home matchup with the reigning NFC champion Falcons. But when asked to address the interception, the pain was evident in McCown’s voice, as he described his thoughts through audible sighs.
“It was just a bad feeling. It’s something that I’ll learn from,” said McCown, who accounted for all four Jets touchdowns Sunday, three passing and one rushing. “I want to be better in that situation, I plan to be better in that situation, and that’s what it is. I hate it. I hate it for our team in that moment. And I hate it for everybody, because obviously all want to win and to have played as well as we had as an offense for most of the game and to move the football the way we had and then to stall in the fourth and then finish it like that, it’s just a bad taste.”
This, it seems, is a common feeling in Florham Park early this week. Players are humans. And it’s hard not to look back on Sunday’s crushing defeat and feel like the Jets missed a golden opportunity for a road victory.
The Jets mustered minus-4 yards of total offense in the fourth quarter. Untimely penalties killed the Jets rhythm on both sides of the ball. In total, Bowles’ squad committed 12 penalties for a staggering 124 yards, including five penalties in the fourth quarter. A sixth flag for illegal motion was declined by Miami.
“That definitely killed us,” defensive lineman Leonard Williams said of the penalties.
The Jets’ first two drives of the final quarter stalled after false starts — one from Brian Winters and one from James Carpenter, two of the team’s most-experienced linemen. Cornerback Buster Skrine was then called for two holding penalties on the Dolphins’ tying touchdown drive.
“In the heat of battle, some things happen,” Bowles said of the penalties. “We’ve got to have more poise under pressure.” But penalties are just part of the problem. The Jets have now blown double-digit leads in three of the past four games — a 10-point fourth-quarter lead against the Jags in an eventual win; a 14-point second-quarter lead in a loss to the Patriots; and this past Sunday’s debacle.
Now at 3-4, Gang Green enters perhaps its most difficult stretch of the season, starting with Atlanta this weekend. The following Thursday, the Jets host the second-place Bills. They play at the Bucs the following weekend before their bye, then face the Panthers (4-3), Chiefs (5-2), Broncos (3-3) and Saints (4-2) in consecutive weeks.
McCown, though, refused to call this scenario a “crossroads” for the Jets.
“It’s still early yet,” he said. “We lost two (games against the Pats and Dolphins), and the fashion of these are little tougher because they are close games, both had different things that happened in them that emotionally can be draining. But I don’t that they’re any different. At the end of the day, you lost the game, and we got to get back to playing the ball that we know we can play.”