The catch and the win that may have saved the Jets' season

The Jets aren’t out of the big hole they dug themselves, but they hope Thursday night’s stirring victory can springboard them to some success.

Interim coach Jeff Ulbrich said the outside noise during the Jets’ five-game losing streak was “loud” and the team “took some shots externally.” The Jets responded in rousing fashion, with Aaron Rodgers throwing three touchdown passes in the second half in a 21-13 victory over the Houston Texans that quieted that noise for now.

All of the noise after this one was directed at Garrett Wilson’s amazing, leaping one-handed touchdown grab that could go down as the play of the year.

“Oh my goodness,” Ulbrich said Friday. “One of the historic plays in all of football. To see that live is so special. So happy for Garrett because it’s just another piece to his evolution and his growth as a player and a man and a teammate.”

That was a game-changing play and maybe a season-altering one, too.

The Jets are 3-6 and have two games remaining before their Week 12 bye — at Arizona and home against Indianapolis. They have an opportunity to go into the bye on a three-game winning streak, which would keep them in the playoff hunt in December.

“Hopefully this gives us confidence that we can beat anybody, because we feel like we could,” Rodgers said. “The way we played on offense in the second half is the way we’ve been kind of waiting for this offense to wake up.”

It was an impressive showing as Rodgers had as many touchdown passes as incompletions in the second half. He was 15-for-18, and two of those completions were brilliant one-handed catches by Wilson that went for touchdowns. Rodgers and Davante Adams also rekindled some of their past chemistry, with Adams catching his first touchdown pass as a Jet.

Overall, it was a much-needed performance in a must-win game that could change the trajectory of the Jets’ season.

“When you play like that, I think it generates some confidence and it generates some momentum,” Ulbrich said. “Both those things are going to be integral going forward. There was some hope to that second half. Sometimes when you put it together, it creates like, ‘We can really get this done.’ It’s something that I really believe will carry us forward here.”

The Jets dominated the second half on both sides. They held the Texans to 121 yards of total offense, only 42 passing, and allowed two field goals.

The Jets sacked C.J. Stroud eight times. Will McDonald had nine pressures, Haason Reddick added eight and Quinnen Williams had 1.5 sacks for the second straight game.

Building off this will be critical for the Jets.

“It can give you that momentum that you need to carry into the next game,” Adams said. “It doesn’t always work that way. You got to somehow bottle up the feeling that we have and take that one in there and take a shot of it before we get out there on the field next game.”

Corley’s mishap

The noise would have been deafening for rookie receiver Malachi Corley had the Jets lost. Corley had his first NFL touchdown nullified because he dropped the football before crossing the goal line and it rolled out of the end zone for a touchback.

Ulbrich said the point made to Corley and everyone else is, “You squeeze that ball hard enough to pop it until you absolutely are in the end zone. On top of it, that would have been his first touchdown, so that’s a ball he should have kept anyway, shouldn’t have dropped anyway. Not acceptable. He knows it.”

Two-minute drill

Ulbrich described Allen Lazard’s chest injury as “funky” with a “really weird range” of time that he could miss. The Jets put him on injured reserve Thursday. The earliest he could return is Dec. 8 . . . Rookie tackle Olu Fashanu played right guard for the first time in his life Thursday because of injuries on the line. Ulbrich called the job Fashanu did “remarkable.”

By Al Iannazzone

al.iannazzone@newsday.comAl_Iannazzone

Al Iannazzone covers the Jets for Newsday after spending nearly two decades on the NBA beat with Knicks and Nets.