New York Jets: Top 3 takeaways from the team’s Monday night meltdown

New York Jets (Photo by Emilee Chinn/Getty Images) /

The New York Jets suffered one of their biggest letdowns in years when they were obliterated by the New England Patriots by a final score of 33-0 on Monday Night Football.

The New York Jets are in a repeated cycle of misery and Monday night’s demolition at the hands of their arch-rivals the New England Patriots solidified that.

Riding a wave of momentum following a thrilling upset victory over the Dallas Cowboys in the previous week, the Jets came out and were blindsided by a dominant Patriots team that looked like they had no business being on the field with their clearly inferior opponents.

It was less of a football game and more of a one-sided thrashing.

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The Jets looked completely overwhelmed in every facet of the game but most significant was the job done by the Patriots defense to make Sam Darnold and the Jets offense looked completely helpless.

The offense looked as bad as it did weeks ago with Luke Falk starting. Expect it wasn’t Falk under center. It was Sam Darnold — the supposed franchise savior.

That alone makes this loss worse than any this season.

On that sour note, let’s take a look at three takeaways from this abomination of a game.

Next: 3. Leonard Williams helps his trade value

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3. Leonard Williams helps his trade value

If there is any positive takeaway from this game — and we’re really searching here — it’s that defensive lineman Leonard Williams put together perhaps the best game of his season.

And it came at the perfect time no less.

Williams has been the subject of a myriad of trade rumors with teams like the Philadelphia Eagles and Oakland Raiders among those interested. And his performance on Monday night certainly helped to raise his trade value.

2. The coaching staff looked woefully unprepared

But while Williams shined, the rest of the team looked completely unprepared for their opponents. And that must fall on the coaching staff.

While the Jets defense certainly had its struggles halting the well-oiled machine that is the Patriots offense, they did their best to limit them. And Gregg Williams did a decent job of overcoming his team’s weaknesses on defense.

Players like Trumaine Johnson simply can’t be fixed.

However, it was a completely different story on offense.

Adam Gase’s unit was completely overwhelmed by the Patriots front-seven as Bill Belichick dialed up cover-zero blitzes frequently and the Jets simply had no answer. The offensive line was confused and oftentimes the team simply didn’t have the personnel to match-up regardless.

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And it’s not as if the Patriots were disguising blitzes either. While they may have disguised which players were blitzing, they showed seven-to-eight-man pressures and that’s exactly what they brought.

Despite this, seemingly no adjustments were made as Gase simply trotted out his quarterback to be decimated every offensive series. And if schematic analysis isn’t your thing, look no further than Belichick’s open mocking of the Jets late in the game.

He laughed right in the face of the Jets organization. He was toying with them. He knew very well that he was facing a coaching staff in over their heads and that the Jets were no closer to relevance than they had been in years.

This loss is on the coaching staff as much as it is anyone else. And that staff begins and ends with Adam Gase.

Next: 1. We witnessed the worst version of Sam Darnold

New York Jets (Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images) /

1. We witnessed the worst version of Sam Darnold

We saw a different version of Sam Darnold on Monday night. A version of him that we hadn’t really seen before. Sure, we had seen him make poor decisions and have difficult games, but not like this.

Darnold was erratic, inaccurate, and spooked — no pun intended. And while much of the blame deserves to go on the coaching staff for putting him in a position to fail, it’s not exactly encouraging to see him respond in the way that he did.

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Perhaps the most endearing trait that we’ve seen from Darnold in his short NFL career to this point has been his ability to bounce back. He’ll make mistakes, sure, but he rarely piles mistakes on to previous ones.

He’s tenacious and when he falters, he comes back stronger and more apt to succeed. But that wasn’t what happened on Monday night — quite the opposite, in fact.

Darnold was rattled early on and he simply never recovered. He lost his psyche which is generally one of the strongest parts of his game. This wasn’t the Sam Darnold we were used to seeing.

This was the worst version of Sam Darnold.

It’s only one game and given the circumstances it’s certainly explainable, but Jets fans have now gotten a glimpse of who their franchise quarterback could be on his worst day.

New York Jets: Robby Anderson trade talk heating up ahead of deadline. Next

For his sake, let’s just hope that this was his true rock bottom moment.

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