The Jets have talked all season about needing to start faster, and it looked like they finally solved that on Sunday, scoring three touchdowns on three straight drives to open their game against the Eagles.
The problem? It seems as if the Jets then forgot how to actually move the ball at all.
Zach Wilson’s 19-yard pass to Jamison Crowder with 11:33 left in the second quarter gave the Jets a first and goal, and four plays later, Ryan Griffin’s touchdown grab gave the Jets their third score with 9:22 left in the second.
Over the next 25 minutes of game play and more than 90 minutes of real time, the Jets did not have another first down, and in fact held the ball for less than four minutes – including 1:10 in the third quarter – between first downs.
New York went three-and-out on their fourth drive, taking 2:20 off the clock, and after their fifth “drive” was one kneel down at the end of the half (a 19-second “possession”), Gang Green opened the second half…with a three-and-out in 1:10 on their first and only possession of the third quarter.
The defense held Philly to a pair of field goals despite 13:50 time of possession in the third, and finally, with just over 14 minutes left in the fourth, Zach Wilson hit Elijah Moore on an 18-yard pass on second and 10 for the Jets’ first down in two full quarters (25:12 to be exact) and just under one hour, 40 minutes of real time.
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They followed up with another first down pass to Ryan Griffin, hoping to get the offense going again, but after an injury timeout to tend to Griffin, the next three plays were Zach Wilson throwaway, incompletion off the hands of Elijah Moore, and finally, an interception by Marcus Epps that sailed way over the head of intended receiver Jamison Crowder over the middle, ending the Jets’ drive in
Wilson had started 10-of-11 and was 12-of-14 overall in the first half, but was 3-for-9 with the interception between the final first down of the first half and first of the second half.
The good news is that the Eagles only scored 12 points in that whole run...but the bad news is that those 12 points took the game from 21-18 to 33-18, and while Jets were able to move the ball later in the fourth as the Eagles played looser, they were unable to score any further points.
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