Three takeaways from the Jets' Week 7 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers
Jets running back Breece Hall is tackled by Pittsburgh Steelers safety DeShon Elliott in the first half of an NFL game in Pittsburgh on Sunday. Credit: AP/Gene J. Puskar
1. This was a total embarrassment.
Aaron Rodgers talking about the Jets being “flat” before a Sunday night game when they’d lost three straight games and just added one of the best receivers in the league is a really bad sign. The Jets are a fragile team, apparently. They had momentum, lost it on Rodgers’ second-quarter interception and never fought to get it back. That’s really disconcerting for a team that keeps saying it can contend for a title and just needs to go on a run. Interim coach Jeff Ulbrich said if you make mistakes, “you got to fight your [expletive] off to [expletive] fix it.” The Jets didn’t. They were outscored 31-0 in the last 30:27 of the game. They gave up a touchdown with 27 seconds left in the first half and 26 seconds left in the game. They showed no resistance or pride when they needed to, and now they’re in a bad state again.
2. This is all very familiar.
Rodgers dropped another doozy in his postgame news conference: “We got to somehow keep the belief in the locker room and start a run.” It’s hard to rally the troops, especially those who have been here the last number of years and starred in this bad movie before. Rodgers was supposed to be a franchise-changer. Adding Davante Adams was supposed to help. Adams just arrived this week, so he needs more time. But the Jets’ offense is having the same issues it has had with quarterbacks who weren’t as good as Rodgers. They’re on their third play-caller in three years, and the same issues exist. The Steelers are a good defense, but the Jets were able to move the ball against them. They couldn’t finish, they turned it over, they dropped passes, they committed penalties. The Jets scored touchdowns on two of their first five series. The rest of their possessions went like this: interception, end of half, punt, interception, blocked field goal, turnover on downs, end of game. Yikes.
3. Run Game Wanted, Run Defense Needed
It’s a bad combination when you can’t run the football and you can’t stop the other team from doing it. Look, this defense was dreadful against Russell Wilson, who wasn’t sharp at the outset in his Steelers debut. The Steelers are a meh offense, but they recorded a season-high points (37) and yards (409) and scored on their last five possessions. They ran for 149 yards and two touchdowns. Najee Harris had some long runs and some angry runs against a defense that buckled. Haason Reddick ending his holdout surely will have an impact on the defense. We have to see what it is, given that he hasn’t gone through a training camp or played football since last season. On the other side of the ball, the Jets got nothing going on the ground. They had 54 yards on 15 carries. The design was not to run the ball 15 times and have Rodgers drop back 40 times. This is not a recipe for winning.
Al Iannazzone covers the Jets for Newsday after spending nearly two decades on the NBA beat with Knicks and Nets.
