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FITZ GETS REVENGE AS JETS’ SLIM PLAYOFF HOPES TAKE HIT
TAMPA, Fla. — The Jets had nothing to dance about Sunday.
A week after playing their best game and dancing on the field, the Jets looked like they were sleepwalking through a 15-10 loss Sunday to the Buccaneers at Raymond James Stadium.
“You’ve got to show up every week in this league or you get it handed to you,” Jets coach Todd Bowles said. “We didn’t show up today.”
The Jets offense was abysmal. The unit gave up six sacks to a Buccaneers team that came into the game with eight this season. The Jets averaged 2.9 yards per rush. They went 3-for-15 on third down. They seemed out of sync all day and unable to stop the Buccaneers defense.
“We didn’t come out fast,” wide receiver Robby Anderson said. “We didn’t come out executing like we normally do. When we started getting a rhythm, there was something stopping us. We stopped ourselves.”
The Jets have now lost four of their last five games and head into their bye week at 4-6 with the slim playoff hopes they entered the day with all but extinguished.
“It seemed like they wanted it more than we did,” nose tackle Steve McLendon said in a damning statement.
The Buccaneers snapped a fivegame losings kid as former Jets quarter back Ryan Fitzpatrick was not spectacular, but did enough to steer Tampa Bay to the win. He completed 17-of-34 for 187 yards with a touchdown and an interception.
The Jets looked nothing like the team that beat the Bills 10 days earlier. In that game, they rushed for nearly 200 yards and everything seemed to be clicking offensively. On Sunday, they looked like they were operat- ing in slow motion, struggling to find any rhythm or establish anything in the game. Punter Lachlan Edwards seemed to be on the field every time you looked up. They also had two turnovers — an interception from Josh McCown and a fumble by Bilal Powell.
The defense played pretty well, but it could not win the game by itself and ran out of gas in the fourth quarter.
“The defense did their part. As an offense, we have to play better. It’s frustrating,” said tight end Austin Seferian-Jenkins, who did not have a catch until the fourth quarter.
McCown, who has played so well this year, struggled. He was under siege from a Buccaneers pass rush that had not been a factor before Sunday. They hit McCown 14 times to go with the six sacks. He finished the game 23-of-39 for 263 yards with a touchdown and an interception.
The Jets offensive line had a terrible day.
“They didn’t play well,” Bowles said. “That’s one of the areas that didn’t play well, but all areas didn’t play well. They played in our backfield all day long. We missed blocks or we got penalties. It was just a cluster.”
Tampa Bay entered the fourth quarter with a 9-3 lead on three Patrick Murray field goals. The Buccaneers sealed the game with a 15-play, 81-yard drive early in the fourth. That drive was aided by a pass interference call on Darryl Roberts on third down that gave the Bucs a first down. Then, on third-and -15, Charles Sims ran for 21 yards through the Jets defense. Fitzpatrick found Sims for a 6-yard touchdown pass to put Tampa up 15-3 with 6:05 left in the game.
The Jets finally reached the end zone with 28 seconds left to play on a McCown-to-Anderson 38-yard touchdown, but it was too little, too late.
“We lost a unanimous decision in a 12-round fight,” Bowles said.
Bowles insisted the Jets did not come into Sunday as an overconfident bunch following their impressive win over the Bills last week, but something looked off about the Jets all day.
“We played hard. We didn’t play smart,” Bowles said.
Jets cornerback Morris Claiborne, who left the game with a foot injury in the first quarter, said the Jets were flat.
“The whole time I was on the sideline I kept saying the same thing, ‘We’re flat. We’re not playing like ourselves,’ ” Claiborne said. “Normally, certain situations happen during the game and our defense, we’re dancing and everybody is loose, everybody is feeling good. Today, you didn’t see that.”
The Jets again hurt themselves with penalties, committing eight on Sunday. It has been a season-long problem they have not been able to solve.
With six games remaining, any talk of the playoffs seems silly at 4-6. But the Jets are not giving up hope.
“Our backs are against the wall,” left tackle Kelvin Beachum said. “This is a bad situation. We’ve dug ourselves into a very bad hole, but there’s still hope.”