It was a cold, snowy slog in sloppy conditions, and a game where there were more punts than points until the final two minutes – but in their season finale of 2023, the Jets ended a 15-game losing streak to the Patriots, and maybe the Bill Belichick era in New England, with a 17-3 win in Foxboro.
It was Gang Green’s first win over the Patriots since Dec. 27, 2015, when Ryan Fitzpatrick threw a TD pass to Eric Decker in OT to give the Jets a 26-20 win at MetLife Stadium – the penultimate game of Todd Bowles’ first year and the Jets’ 10th win of that season, the last time they won more than seven.
It was also the Jets’ first win in Foxboro since a playoff victory on Jan. 16, 2011, in an AFC Divisional Game, and the first regular-season victory there since an OT win on Nov. 13, 2008.
The game was, as you might expect a game between a 6-10 and 4-12 team on a snowy day to be, offensively challenged, with the Jets racking up more than two-thirds of their offense on the ground – most courtesy of Breece Hall, who had 178 yards and a touchdown on 37 carries, and added two catches for 12 yards.
Trevor Siemien was just 8-for-20 for 70 yards, and was sacked once on the day, but Hall gave Gang Green all they needed on a day where the D sacked Bailey Zappe seven times and picked him off twice, those coming on consecutive plays.
The game started with five straight three-and-outs before the Jets got the first first down about nine minutes in. That drive, which started on the Pats’ 38 after a shanked punt, ended in a Greg Zuerlein 21-yard field goal, his first of three on the day.
New England tied it with a Chad Ryland 30-yard field goal early in the second, but the Jets countered with Zuerlein’s second field-goal of the day a few minutes later, and it remained 6-3 into the half after Zuerlein doinked a 49-yard attempt off the bottom of the upright with less than 30 seconds left.
Come the second half, seven straight punts opened the final 30 minutes before the Pats turned it over on downs, failing to convert a 4th-and-1 from their 45 – and a 33-yard field goal by Zuerlein made it 9-3 with just over eight minutes to go.
And then things got weird.
New England went three-and-out, and on the ensuing possession, the Jets failed to convert a 4th-and-1 on the Pats’ 37 with just under four minutes left, kicking off a sequence that saw two turnovers on one play, a third on the next play, and a Breece Hall 50-yard TD run and two-point conversion in the span of seven plays.
It was all over but the shouting, and after the Pats turned it over on downs with :18 left on the clock, Hall’s 37th carry of the sent the game, and the season, to zeroes.
And so, a year after they finished 7-10 and saw Sauce Gardner and Garrett Wilson win Rookie of the Year Awards on both sides of the ball, and 17 weeks after Aaron Rodgers was lost for the season four plays in, the Jets…finish 7-10, and will pick somewhere between ninth and 12th in the Draft pending the results of the rest of Week 18.
Hall’s monster day got him to 994 yards on the ground, just shy of the magical 1,000-yard number in his return from a torn ACL. Garrett Wilson was Siemien’s leading receiver with two catches for 34 yards, although he left the game after taking a big hit in the third quarter; he cleared concussion protocol, but did not return with what was termed a neck injury. He finished the season with 95 catches for 1,042 yards and three TD, more grabs but less yards and fewer touchdowns than his rookie season.