Tackling woes continue to plague the Jets on defense

The questions were unrelenting and unsparing.

What, specifically, went wrong for the Jets on Sunday in Arizona, and, more broadly, what has gone so very wrong over the first 10 weeks of this season?

And from Jeff Ulbrich to Jamien Sherwood to Tyler Conklin, the answers were the same: The fundamental problems plaguing the Jets were and are the fundamentals.

"Defensively, the story was tackling. One hundred percent. And man coverage. We didn’t cover well and we didn’t tackle well. It was a collective effort,” Ulbrich said during a video conference call with reporters Monday morning. “From an offensive perspective . . . ultimately we didn’t finish drives. We didn’t finish drives.”

There was precious little Ulbrich, Sherwood and Conklin pointed toward as silver linings in the immediate aftermath of the 31-6 loss to the Cardinals, which dropped the Jets to 3-7.

In what was internally and externally expected to be the franchise’s first playoff appearance since 2010 prior to the start of the season, the Jets return home having lost six of their last seven games.

An offense helmed by Aaron Rodgers is averaging 17.7 points per game. Only six teams are averaging fewer points. The defense, which was supposed to be the foundation upon which the current iteration of the franchise is built, is allowing 302.3 yards and 21.4 points per game.

So, then, what is the mindset for the final seven games of the regular season? And what do the Jets have to do in order to salvage this campaign?

“Finish strong. No matter what that record looks like, no matter what those scoreboards look like, at the end of the day you demonstrate your love for the man next to you by the way you finish. By the way you face adversity in these types of times,” said Sherwood, who recorded a game-high 17 tackles. “Nobody would assume or thought the season would have went this way when we started. So it’s very upsetting.

“But again the way you show your love for the man beside you, the way you show your love for football, is just to finish strong. We still have seven games left. At the end of the day I don’t know how [things] are going to work out in the end but if we continue to strain and show our effort and fix all these problems we’ve been having, who knows what it’ll look like at the end of the year?”

There are 55 days between Monday and the regular-season finale against the equally disappointing Dolphins at MetLife Stadium on Jan. 5. There is time to learn from mistakes and make the necessary corrections.

Still, what’s concerning is that the details are lacking. The most obvious of which is that, according to the NFL’s NextGen Stats data compilers, the Jets missed 20 tackles Sunday.

“It is a basic fundamental of football,” Ulbrich said. “Obviously we put some bad tape out there last night or yesterday. I think part of tackling, too, is really trying to find a way that each guy kind of has his own style of which he tackles because some guys are longer than others. Some guys are shorter than others. Some guys are quicker than others. So we try to really create a tackling plan that’s specific to every player.”

Then there is the offense, which had the ball for 27:18 spanning six drives over the course of the game but could only manage Spencer Shrader field goals of 25 and 45 yards on their first two possessions of the game.

Ulbrich praised the unit’s ability to sustain drives but lamented its inability to score touchdowns. The most noteworthy example was the 10-play, 62-yard march to open the third quarter that ended with Rodgers being sacked and fumbling on fourth-and-goal from the Cardinals’ 3-yard line and the Jets trailing 24-6.

Xavier Thomas knocked the ball loose at the 8-yard line and Kyzir White recovered it at the 12 to essentially put to an end to the competitive portion of the contest.

“He just wasn’t able to get it out,” said Conklin, who was open in the end zone on the play. “It’s kind of the way it goes sometimes.”

Injury updates

Left tackle Tyron Smith “was going to get some imaging” on his neck, and cornerback Brandin Echols is in concussion protocol, Ulbrich said.