This time, Jets' Breece Hall brings the pain in triumphant return to Denver
Jets running back Breece Hall and wide receiver Garrett Wilson, right, celebrate as they leave the field following an NFL game against the Broncos on Sunday in Denver. Credit: AP/Jack Dempsey
DENVER
Breece Hall couldn’t remember the exact spot where he tore his left ACL less than a year ago. It was all such a blur for him back then, and as he walked around the field at Mile High Stadium on Sunday morning before his Jets took on the Broncos, he wasn’t quite certain where it all went down, where his rookie season came to a screeching halt.
But there was one monument from that dreadful day last October that Hall was intent on revisiting.
Shortly after arriving in the building, he went straight into the training room attached to the Jets’ locker room. There it was, the third table from the wall, where he sat to have his knee poked and prodded by the medical staff. It was where he first came to terms with the severity of his injury.
“I was like, ‘Damn, when I tore my ACL, it was right in there,’ ” he said on Sunday, craning his neck to peek inside.
It wasn’t a melancholy moment, however. Hall even said he laughed and cracked jokes about his return to Denver and the full-circle moment of having his “pitch count” lifted for the first time this season.
“I don’t care about it anymore,” he said. “I’m new and improved now. I got my robot knee. I’m good.”
He certainly is.
He was able to demonstrate it with a 177-yard effort on 22 carries that included a dazzling 72-yard touchdown on the Jets’ first snap of the second half, the only time they reached the end zone offensively in their 31-21 win over the Broncos.
The victory meant a lot to a lot of people.
Offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett got some measure of redemption for his failed one-year tenure as head coach in this city and the barbs thrown at him by his replacement, Sean Payton, during the preseason.
Zach Wilson had a second straight solid performance, further cementing himself as the Jets’ starting quarterback when just a few blinks ago, it seemed as if he were finished.
Quincy Williams had a breakout game defensively as he starts to put himself on equal footing with his brother, Jets Pro Bowler Quinnen Williams.
Hall said his narrative should stand behind all of them. But without his performance, none of those arcs would have had the satisfying endings they did.
“It’s whatever to me,” Hall said. “Everybody was making it a bigger deal than I was. I was like ‘[Expletive], people tear their ACLs every day.’ ”
They usually don’t come back from them this quickly, though. This triumphantly.
“He looks pretty good,” coach Robert Saleh said, purposely underplaying what he saw with a sly grin. “He’s a special back.”
It was the touchdown run that illustrated that the most clearly on Sunday, his first score since a 62-yarder that came on the day he hurt his knee on this very field. He took a handoff, picked up a pulling block from Laken Tomlinson, put a little juke on a safety and was gone.
“I handed it off and looked back and you could have driven a semi truck through that hole,” Zach Wilson said. “That dude is a stud.”
Hall hit 21.5 mph on the dash, according to NextGen Stats, but by the time he reached the end zone, he was at a slow jog. He said that’s because when he gets past defenders, they know they won’t be able to catch him so they stop trying.
Saleh said he and his defensive coaches often marvel at Hall in practices.
“He’s a deceptive runner,” Saleh said. “He’s so massive and it doesn’t look like he’s moving. You feel like you are tracking him properly and all of a sudden, it’s like, ‘Oh, crap, where’d he go?’ ”
The word his teammates kept using over and over to describe Hall was “phenomenal.”
Tight end C.J. Uzomah called him “a monster.”
Center Connor McGovern said Hall is “an inspiration.”
Hall, of course, would cringe at all of those superlatives. To him, he’s just doing what comes naturally.
He’s had several runs that had the chance to go all the way. There was one against Buffalo in the opener when he was caught (he said it was a matter of conditioning) and one last week against Kansas City that nearly popped.
Finally, on Sunday, he was able to take it to the house.
And as he walked out of the locker room, he glanced over his shoulder at that training room, at that table, for one last look.
Then he hit the doorway like an open hole and was gone.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
