Penalties, mistakes, and an inept offense plagued the Jets.
Stop me if you’ve heard this sentence before.
In the previous three seasons, the Jets ranked in the top five defensively.
But that was under former Jets coach Robert Saleh and interim coach Jeff Ulbrich. Through two games this season under first-year head coach Aaron Glenn and defensive coordinator Steve Wilks, the Jets’ defense does not resemble anything from the last three seasons.
Case in point, the Bills steamrolled the Jets 30-10 in a game that, quite frankly, was not as close as the final score indicated. Gang Green allowed 224 rushing yards and three rushing touchdowns.
Most of that came from James Cook, who finished with 132 yards and two touchdowns on 21 carries. It was the most rushing yards the Jets have allowed since 2021, a season in which they finished 4-13.
“I would say there wasn’t a challenge,” Jets linebacker Jamien Sherwood said. “There was a struggle. Again, self-inflicted wounds.
“We have to stay in our gaps. We need to get downhill faster. We need to use our hands techniques. We have to rely on all of our preparation.
“We have to see formations. We have to adjust on the sidelines. We all have to be on one quarter, but we’ll get there. Believe and trust in the process.”
In the season-opening 34-32 loss to the Steelers, the Jets defense allowed ex-teammate Aaron Rodgers to pass for 244 yards and four touchdowns. Gang Green did a good job containing Josh Allen. He completed 14-of-25 passes for 148 yards and was held without a touchdown pass or run.
However, the Jets defense couldn’t stop Cook the entire day. On his 44-yard touchdown run, Cook made several players miss on his way to the end zone, including Sherwood.
“I was surprised to hear we had that many rushing yards,” Jets safety Andre Cisco said. “I felt like that was going to be a concern the way it ended up being, going into the week, knowing, obviously, James Cook is a great back, but we ended up giving up a lot of yards here, so I’ll take a look at that.
It just wasn’t the rushing yards allowed that were alarming for the Jets, but so were the miscues throughout the afternoon. The Jets committed just five penalties for 35 yards, but it seemed like every one of them was backbreaking.
On Allen’s 40-yard run in the first quarter, Jets cornerback Michael Carter II was called for a holding, which gave Buffalo an additional five yards. Then, on the same drive on 3rd and 19 on the Jets’ 30-yard line, Jets defensive end Micheal Clemons was flagged for roughing the passer after he hit Allen high.
Glenn was irate on the sideline and he took Clemons out of the game briefly before he later returned on the next drive. However, the damage was done after Cook found the end zone for his first of two touchdowns.
The penalty swung momentum and ended up being a four-point swing.
“The thing is, we know they call that call when you hit the quarterback high, when you hit him in the head and neck area,” Glenn said. “That’s just what they’re calling now, so we have to be smarter than that.”
Mistakes weren’t just exclusive to the defensive side of the ball against the Bills. The Jets offense couldn’t get off the runway a week after registering 394 yards in the loss to the Steelers.
Buffalo held Gang Green to just 154 yards, with a lot of that coming when the game was already decided late in the fourth quarter. During their second offensive drive, Bills pass rusher Joey Bosa stripped Jets quarterback Justin Fields during his scramble and teammate A.J. Epenesa recovered the ball in Jets territory on the 24-yard line. That set up a 28-yard field goal by Matt Prater, which increased the Bills lead to 10-0.
Fields was inaccurate after completing 3 of 11 passes for just 27 yards. He was also sacked twice and pressured a bulk of the afternoon, which caused him to have a few errant passes, including one to Garrett Wilson on a third down on the first drive.
Fields exited the game in the fourth quarter after he hit his head on the turf following Bosa’s sack and suffered a concussion. Tyrod Taylor came in for Fields, and he accounted for the Jets’ lone touchdown of the day after he completed a five-yard touchdown pass to Jeremy Ruckert with 3:30 remaining.
“Apparently, I didn’t have the guys ready to play,” Glenn said. “So, whatever we see on tape, and we have to be honest with ourselves with what we see on tape, we have to fix those things. And that’s just the way this league is.
“And it’s not okay. It’s not okay to lose like that. And I’m not a big fan of sitting here and telling everybody, ‘Guys, it’s okay.’ No, no, you don’t just lose like that and it’s okay. What it is, man, is you go back to work and you still have to fix those problems that you saw on tape, and you move on to next week. And that’s what we’re going to do.”
The road doesn’t get any easier for the Jets after beginning the season 0-2. They will have back-to-back road trips in Florida beginning against the Buccaneers. Then they will travel to play division rival Miami, a place they haven’t won since 2014, which was Rex Ryan’s final game as Jets coach.
An NFL team can start the season with a 0-3 record and still make the playoffs, but it is historically rare. Only six teams have accomplished it since 1979, with the most recent example being the 2018 Texans.
“There’s a lot of guys that want to come in and compete with us,” Cisco said. “And so you got to understand nothing is set in stone, I think, started using us. How I look at it, like you want the team to be in that as a team move forward.
“We want wins, and we need them now. You know, it’s just not going to be where you want to hang around and hopefully come together. We want to be able to compete.”
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