The Jets had issues on offense with managing the play clock and breaking the huddle from the start and it continued through the end of Sunday’s 25-22 loss to the New England Patriots.
“We’ve got to be better from an operations standpoint, just overall, and that’s every single player, every single coach,” interim head coach Jeff Ulbrich said after the game. “That’s [Aaron Rodgers]. That’s all of us.”
New York’s offense used all three of their first-half timeouts in the first nine offensive plays of the game – a stretch of play that also included a delay of game. When asked about the issues that led to burning all the timeouts, the 40-year-old quarterback playing in his 20th NFL season said he wasn’t “exactly sure.”
“On one of them, we were lagging out of the huddle, one I was trying to get the protection right. One I felt like we could have gotten off, but it was fine to take it there,” Rodgers said. “Yeah, our operation was a little slow at times.”
The troubles propped up again in the fourth quarter after Braelon Allen plunged into the end zone to put the Jets up 22-17. Looking for a two-point conversion and a touchdown advantage, the play clocked ran out before Rodgers got the snap.
“Well, they start the clock at 20, and we had a shift and a motion, and by the time it came down to it, the defense they were playing wasn’t good for the play that was called,” Rodgers said of the delay. “I figured let’s just move it back to the seven, not that much of a difference, I liked the play that we called. But they brought zero pressure, and I guessed wrong, they guessed right.”
And after the delay, the two-point try failed when Rodgers completed a pass to Mike Williams but he was tackled well short of the end zone. It proved costly as the Patriots’ ensuing touchdown put them ahead without attempting a try.
Does the head coach see it as a problem of the players not knowing where to line up?
“We’ve just got to be better collectively,” Ulbrich said, nearly repeating his earlier answer. “Every single human being out there has got to be better. Aaron has got to be better. Coaches got to be better. All of us got to be better.”
Rodgers said he can’t “objectively say this is the reason why” the offense is having pre-snap problems.
“There’s a lot of, we had some substitution stuff at times. We were late back in the huddle, sometimes after a big play, that can be a slow operation,” the QB said. “We have shifts and motions on plays after some of those. We were trying to get lined up, trying to get the play off, trying to get the perfect call. There’s a lot to look at.”
For the Jets – led by the most experienced quarterback in the league and an offense with a solid mix of veterans and younger players – these types of issues are rather concerning.
“They shouldn’t happen, first of all, whether you’re veteran, rookie. It doesn’t matter. Inexperienced, experienced, doesn’t matter,” Ulbrich said. “The operation of our offense, it should not do that. Does it happen every once in a while, every couple games, maybe. But to happen as often as it did tonight, it’s not good enough, and it’s got to get fixed.”
“Offensively, we have to do a better job of getting in and out of the huddle,” running back Breece Hall said. “We need to let Aaron be Aaron, give him time to see the defense and make his adjustments.”
What makes matters worse for the Jets and their offense, this performance comes after Ulbrich called this past week “one of the better weeks that I’ve had around here from a preparation standpoint.”
“I thought the energy was excellent, the focus was excellent,” the head coach said on Friday. “The guys are in a great place from that standpoint and we’re ready to play this Sunday.”
After Sunday’s defeat, Ulbrich said there were spots, but overall “it wasn’t good enough.”
“We’ve all got to take a hard look at ourselves, starting with me, and the process, practice, meetings, walk-through, all of it, and make sure everything is right and make sure everything is being done at the highest level because right now, the product that we’re putting out there on game day is not the product that’s conducive to winning and building a culture that we’re trying to establish here,” he said.
The Jets didn’t turn the ball over, but punted on four of their first nine drives. Rodgers said winning in the NFL is hard and “harder when you make it difficult on yourself.”
“Offensively we can’t worry about what else happens. We’ve got to be efficient. We’ve got to make the most of the opportunities. There was, again, yards left out there, opportunities left out there. Can’t leave it up to – we’ve got to score touchdowns,” he said. “… We had a lot of opportunities to score 30, to make it a two-score game at times and didn’t do it.”
A week after Davante Adams expressed concern about energy in a speech – a message that reverberated around the team and coaching staff – Rodgers wasn’t alone among the Jets in pointing out that the energy had improved against New England, but the result was the same: another disappointing day on offense in a loss.
“I thought the energy was great today. I thought guys were engaged. I thought we played with some passion,” Rodgers said. “We just execution-wise didn’t do enough. Offensively we set our sights on scoring 30, and it was right there for us. We had 2nd-and-1, couldn’t convert, there’s points, missed a field goal, so there were right there.”
Tight end Tyler Conklin called it a self-inflicted loss.
“It really comes down to just shooting ourselves in the foot,” he said. “Not doing the little things right is probably the easiest way to sum it up. Not executing the little things and not doing the things you have to do as a team to win games like that.”