Jets’ and Giants’ offenses keep lowering the bar
The Jets’ 27-6 loss at home to the Los Angeles Chargers on Monday night at MetLife Stadium had much more gravity and harmful consequences than the Giants’ 30-6 defeat to the Las Vegas Raiders on the road a day earlier.
Nevertheless, both teams’s setbacks are distressing for their respective fan bases and indictments of the offenses that are historically bad.
The Jets only have eight touchdowns and the Giants nine. The Jets are 4-4. The Giants are 2-7. That’s an average of one TD per game for both. In an era when NFL rule changes over the past two decades have been enacted to help generate more offense, the New York teams are determined to go back 80 years to the days of leather helmets.
The Jets came into their game versus the Chargers looking to seize possession of second place in the AFC East and improved to 4-4. They ended it in third behind the 6-3 Miami Dolphins and 5-4 Buffalo Bills by committing three turnovers, producing only two rushing first downs. Unable to sustain a threatening drive, they stopped cold in going 3-17 on third downs under the continued shaky direction of quarterback Zach Wilson and an offensive line unable to pass or run block.
Wilson was sacked eight times, both he and the line equally at fault, and has fallen far short of his third NFL season when he was a play-making difference maker, unless it’s favoring the Jets’ opponents. Head coach Robert Saleh’s high-caliber defensive unit, with elite talent at all three levels, has resoundingly persevered.
Yet, they can’t mitigate their brothers on the other side of the ball with their 16.5 points per game scoring average, which ranks 30th out of 32 teams. The Giants are last at 11.5.
“There was enough blame to go around,” Saleh said Tuesday.
While acknowledging Wilson’s flaws, Saleh was mindful that many other areas of the offense will be graded poorly.
“It’s lazy to just put it all on him. I think, like I said…it was collective all the way across the board.”
Mirroring the Jets, the Giants’ offense didn’t leave them a chance to be competitive, either. The Raiders outplayed their defense, too, giving former Giant Super Bowl (2008) winning linebacker Antonio Pierce, Vegas’s interim head coach, his first NFL head coaching victory.
The game became emotionally deflating for the Giants when down 7-0, Daniel Jones—who returned after sitting out the three previous games with a neck injury—went down with a season-ending torn ACL in his right knee, after being sacked on the last play of the first quarter.
The 25-year-old Jones showed physical and mental toughness by coming back on the field to begin the second, but on the Giants’ next play, his knee buckled without contact, and he immediately shrunk to the turf. He was replaced by rookie Tommy DeVito.
The 25-year-old’s day and season were over at that moment, and his long-term future with the franchise is unclear. However, the transparent outlook for the Giants as a whole for the remaining eight games is that they are playing for pride and jobs, and, by extension, money—strong motivators when a playoff spot is not attainable.
They are last in the NFC East and tied with the two other 2-7 squads—the New England Patriots and Chicago Bears—for the third-worst record in the league.
The Jets will be in Vegas this Sunday night to play the Raiders and the Giants will face the Dallas Cowboys in Texas.
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