Friday Morning Quarterback: Week 12 Jets vs. Patriots

Nov 22, 2012; East Rutherford, NJ, USA; New York Jets head coach Rex Ryan prior to the game against the New England Patriots on Thanksgiving at Met Life Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Ed Mulholland-US PRESSWIRE

It’s the morning after. 49-19. The slim playoff hopes have all but been dashed, thanks to that, I’ll call it football game, last night. This was a debacle, even by Jets standards. We have to talk about it, so let’s get going.

We talked about it during “Jets TakeOff!”, the Jets needed to play mistake-free football, and that was the farthest thing from what happened. After the Gostkowski missed field goal early in the first quarter, you would have thought the Jets caught a break, and it seemed that they were moving the football. But again, a big mistake by Mark Sanchez on the fringe of the redzone, and the momentum was gone for good. New England took a long drive down the field, ending in a Wes Welker touchdown putting the Patriots up 7-0. And then, the unthinkable happened.

3 touchdowns in :52 seconds, that is what happened. Shonn Greene fumbles on fourth down, Steve Gregory recovers for New England. One play later, Brady hits Shane Vereen with an 83 yard TD, with Bart “old man” Scott chasing. Two plays into the next drive was the most pathetic moment. We all saw it, the broken play. Whomever’s fault it was, the play broke down, but again, instead of just falling on the football, Mark runs into the behind of Brandon Moore and fumbles. The Patriots recover and score a TD. The ensuing kickoff, McKnight fumbles, TD again. Blam! It was 28-0 before you even batted an eyelash. It was 35-3 at the half, and 49-19 was the final.

The bottom line is this, you cannot turn the ball over 5 times EVER, but certainly not against the New England Patriots. NFL teams will make you pay for your turnovers, and the New England Patriots will make you pay with interest. Four touchdowns were scored after turnovers, whether it was on the same play returning a fumble, one play after a turnover, or on a drive that resulted from a turnover. 28 points. You cannot recover from that. Period.

Mark had decent numbers if you look at the box score, 26-36 for 301 yards and 1 TD to go along with that one INT. But, Mark never really got the offense going with any inspired play. The fumble was ridiculous, and the interception cannot happen. Most of the yardage was in garbage time, far more important to fantasy football than to NFL. He had poor plays at the wrong time. It was ugly. The running game actually performed pretty well, with Shonn Greene leading the way with 14 carries for 71 yards, and as a team running for over 4 yards per carry. The trouble was that all of the mistakes led to so many points, that they were too far behind to run the ball. They committed far too many errors to have any chance.

By the way, has Tony Sparano ever heard of Vince Wilfork?  Great idea to keep running right into him.  I am not sure that Schotty would even have done that.

We also talked in the TakeOff piece about how the Jets needed pressure on Brady. Well, other than the Wilkerson play when he forced the intentional grounding early, there was none. No sacks were recorded on the night. The TV broadcasters spent a heck of a lot of time talking about the “perfect pocket” that Tom had to throw in. Unacceptable. And, another turnover on special teams. Just 1000% an embarrassment.

It was an epic fail. On to next week to start playing for pride, if they have any left.