Back to reality Jets fans as we just witnessed a rookie quarterback make a mistake or a couple of mistakes as the Jets hand a silver platter to their AFC east rival a 20-12 loss in a game where the Jets had so many opportunities to come away with a victory today but didn’t happen that way. There were multiple occasions where they Jets made a bunch of crucial mistakes starting with turning the ball over 3 times (two of them were interceptions) and some were lucky breaks where they fumbled and were able to pick it up. We knew that this was going to happen and fortunately Darnold and the rest of this team can learn from this as the season progresses.
Let’s look at some of the positives and negatives from this game: Negatives: This week I am going to start with the negatives as this team had a lot. First off, the defense had given up a bunch of big plays especially when they needed a stop late in the fourth quarter. The Dolphins had a 3rd and long with about 3 minutes to go in the game and there was a blown coverage as safety Jamal Adams let Frank Gore go behind him and the Dolphins converted on third down forcing the Jets to burn timeouts.
Turnovers were another big problem for gang green as Darnold threw two picks, one of them were in the red zone and a fumble from Robby Anderson. Darnold’s first pick was almost similar to the one he threw in the preseason against the Redskins, except it was a different coverage and a different player. McDonald baited the young rookie to throw it across the middle to Enunwa and the safety jumped it perfectly. The second pick was not entirely his fault as the ball was placed good enough for Pryor to make a play but the problem was that the 6’6 receiver didn’t turn his head around quickly enough and didn’t make that effort. Jets had a hard time holding on to the ball all game.
I mentioned that the Jets had to win the field position battle in which they didn’t as they mostly started their drives deep in their own territory and couldn’t do anything, which gave the Dolphins excellent field position to start, some of that came from penalties as well because the Jets on occasion had 2nd and long, and 3rd and long, there isn’t enough in the play book to get out of those situations. My last negative is Buster Skrine as he had a terrible game. The Jets have to do something about him because his mechanics are horrendous and teams continue to pick on him and he can’t seem to adjust.
Positives: Even though that the Defense gave up some big plays, they did only hold the Dolphins offense to 257 yards in total. They kept this team in the game throughout and deserve to get some praise. I also think that they might have found a gem in Henry Anderson as he continues to impress the coaching staff with another big performance today. Last week, he put pressure on Stafford and this week he recorded his first sack as a Jet.
Even with the hiccups, I thought Sam Darnold had a pretty good day as there were times where he drove the offense down the field but again he has to clean up those interceptions as the year progresses. During his press conference, he didn’t put himself down, he sounded mature and didn’t throw his teammates under the bus which in my opinion speaks a lot of his character.
I think this game teaches us that we need to pump the brakes a little bit on him before we can make any assumptions, we knew this was the kind of stuff that was going to happen. He is a rookie after all and will continue to grow as it goes, the Jets need to shake this off and get ready for yet another short week as they get ready to play thursday night against the Cleveland Browns.