The Jets Offense is a Mess
There are two ways to view the Jets’ loss on Sunday. You can say it’s been a fun (or not so fun) 5-game ride and call it a season. Or you can take solace in the fact that the Jets almost beat the undefeated Vikings (who have arguably the best scheme in the NFL on both sides of the ball) despite Aaron Rodgers and the offense playing an absolutely horrid game.
Taking a glass-half-full view of the day or the season doesn’t mean we have to put our heads in the sand about this team, though. Because the offense does have issues.
All of them are correctable, and they’re all related. Which means fixing one or two will help address the others. However, the clock is starting to tick. (On Tuesday morning, it struck 0 for Head Coach Robert Saleh, who was fired).
So what are those issues? Well, it’s a little bit of everything. It starts with the offensive line, which has been downright abysmal in pass protection over the last two weeks. The injury to right tackle Morgan Moses had a bigger impact than most of us thought. His replacement, rookie 1st-rounder Olu Fashanu, has struggled in his first two career starts.
The rest of the line hasn’t been that great either, though. And the result has been back-to-back weeks of severe beatings for their 40-year-old quarterback. His play has certainly been impacted.
Speaking of the quarterback, Rodgers is still not on the same page with his receivers. And he hasn’t been able to make up for any glitches in the system with his less-than-stellar performance against the Broncos and Vikings.
The running game has also been non-existent during the last two weeks. That’s not just because the offensive line, and especially the Jets’ tight ends, haven’t been able to block effectively. It’s also the personnel and formation choices, as well as the timing of the decisions to run the ball, that have played a huge factor. The play-calling and offensive design as a whole has been unimaginative.
Not to mention, there have been far too many mistakes, including penalties and dropped passes.
All of these issues were on display Sunday against the Vikings.
Rodgers’ Mistakes
We have to start with Rodgers’ 3 interceptions, though. All 3 were on him, and the outcome of the game is very different without them.
The first pick, which was returned for a touchdown by linebacker Andrew Van Ginkel, came as a result of Minnesota’s pressure looks, similar to what we wrote about in Week 1. I’ll let Aaron Rodgers describe what he saw:
“They had a 7-up presentation…”
“…and we got to something that we talked about.”
“I peaked the backside or something to the left to see if we were hot or not.”
“And in doing that I totally lost sight of Van Ginkel, and he made a nice play.”
This was one of Brian Flores’ various pressures where his linebackers read the slide of the offensive line to determine whether they should rush or drop out.
As Van Ginkel said after the game, “I was […] reading the guard and he came at me, so I dropped and tried to get into that pocket where […] the hot throw is.”
Van Ginkel also said that, “It was something that we planned on and expected.” I’ll have more on the Vikings being able to “expect” certain plays later in this breakdown.
Rodgers’ second interception was truly uncharacteristic. It was a forced throw where his receiver didn’t really have a chance: