3 players to blame for the NY Jets Week 8 loss to the Patriots

On Sunday, the NY Jets welcomed the New England Patriots to MetLife Stadium and hoped to finally win a game against the division rivals. Unfortunately, that was not going to happen as the Jets fell short again. What started as a good and competitive game, quickly turned into a nightmare for Jets fans.

Come the third quarter, the game was all but over for Gang Green. While there was some promising play by the Jets on Sunday, ultimately, the big and costly turnovers by Zach Wilson killed them. Here are three players to blame for the Jets' loss to the Patriots.

3. Braden Mann, P, NY Jets

We'll start with the punter. Braden Mann had a mess of a game on Sunday. He doesn't play a lot of snaps, but almost all of his punts were brutal and led to massive returns or great field position for the Patriots.

Last week against the Denver Broncos, Mann was much more effective. He would finish the game in Denver with eight punts in total for 438 total yards. He averaged 54.8 yards per punt and managed to down two of the eight punts inside the 20.

Sunday was like night and day from last week. Mann finished Sunday's game with three punts for 137 yards. He averaged 45.7 yards per punt and landed none inside the 20-yard line.

He had a rough day, and had his punts gone further and not awarded the Patriots with such good field position, it could have been a closer game.

2. John Franklin-Myers, DE, NY Jets

This one is just unfortunate. John Franklin-Myers himself didn't have an awful game, however, the play that changed the entire game was completely his fault. Late in the second quarter, the Jets seemed to score a pick-six that would have put them ahead of the Patriots 17-3. But it wasn't meant to be.

Franklin-Myers was called for a brutal roughing the passer penalty that called back the touchdown and seemingly took all the momentum away from the Jets. Because of this penalty, the Jets only went into halftime up four points instead of 14.

With this costly penalty, the game changed completely. A game that looked to at one point be dominated by Gang Green turned out to be quite the opposite. The Jets would go on to lose the game 22-17, and they were not able to score at all in the second half.

1. Zach Wilson, QB, NY Jets

As someone who once truly believed in Zach Wilson, it's unfortunate to place him on this list. However, after seeing how he played on Sunday, it's fair to question Wilson's long-term future.

Wilson's shortcomings in recent weeks were able to be overlooked because Breece Hall was the workhorse, but without Hall, we saw a potential ceiling for this Jets team with Zach Wilson, and it wasn't pretty.

Wilson started the game off well, but come the third quarter, this fizzled out big time. Wilson has thrown just one touchdown and seven interceptions in his career against New England. The Patriots have Wilson's number, but aside from that, Wilson just isn't good right now.

Wilson threw three interceptions and all were costly. When he should have thrown the ball away, he ended up lobbing it in the air and throwing a pick. He took a decent number of sacks as well, not showing good field awareness, and ultimately costing his team the game.

Unless something big changes, Wilson's time in New York could come to an end sooner rather than later.