Makeshift offensive line struggles for Jets in season opener
Joe Flacco #19 of the New York Jets looks on against the Baltimore Ravens at MetLife Stadium on Sunday, Sep. 11, 2022 in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Credit: Jim McIsaac
The Jets’ shuffled and re-shuffled offensive line performed about as well as everyone expected Sunday afternoon, which is to say, not well at all.
The unit, composed of five players who rarely saw time together in the preseason — including rookie right tackle Max Mitchell, making his first NFL start — took another blow this past week when the Jets announced that Duane Brown would be out with a shoulder injury. It was a development that shifted George Fant back to left tackle after his transition to right tackle.
The line allowed 11 quarterback hurries by a Ravens defense that forced Joe Flacco to pass the ball 59 times and didn’t allow a third-down conversion until the fourth quarter.
The Jets had only 83 rushing yards and Flacco was sacked three times.
“We ran the ball, almost six yards a carry at halftime, and we just couldn’t get it going in the second half,” Robert Saleh said. “It was a couple of plays where it just snowballed.”
The truth is that they looked positively overmatched at times — especially compared with the defense, which tried to carry them in the first half.
It was something guard Laken Tomlinson chalked up to lack of execution. Asked if all the changes, including Mekhi Becton’s season-ending injury, made it difficult to perform, he demurred.
“Honestly, I think we’ve got to take advantage of the opportunities that we had,” he said. “We’ve just got to do a better job protecting the ball. It starts up front and it’s something we can go back and look at and go back to the drawing board.”
Added Mitchell: “You’ve got to take [the positional shifts] with a grain of salt. We expect our guys to know how to do it. We’re professionals. We want to be able to do it at the highest level in any [situation]. I don’t think it had too much of a factor, honestly. We all have good chemistry in the room and it just boiled down to executing a little better.”
Tight end Lawrence Cager said it wasn’t just one unit that led to the loss. It was a collective effort in futility.
“You don’t want to come out after a loss and make excuses,” he said. “It is what it is. It was rainy, we all had our part in the loss and I thought the offensive line, they did good things, bad things . . . We were down and that’s hard on the offensive line. You know they’re passing and they can pin their ears back and get after it, and there’s really no excuse to make.”
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.
