Week 14 Review - Jets

The snow that postponed the Giants-Vikings game and moved it to Detroit tonight apparently grounded the New York Jets as well. For the second week in a row the Jets offense didn't show up and nobody was running around pretending to be an airplane, although Santonio Holmes had a chance to. Trailing 10-0 with just under 5 minutes to go in the 2nd quarter and the Jets deep in Miami territory Holmes dropped a ball that even Luis Castillo would have caught. The Jets were forced to settle for a field goal to make it 10-3 and the offense lost any momentum it was building.

While the defense kept them in the game, the offense looked anemic. The running tandem of LaDainian Tomlinson and Shonn Green gained 66 yards on 27 carries. Prior to their week 7 bye, Tomlinson had only 1 game in which he averaged less than 4 yards per carry and made GM Mike Tannenbaum look smart for picking him up off the scrap heap from San Diego. However, since that time, Tomlinson has averaged under 4 yards per carry in each game except once and had only 2.6 yards per carry yesterday against Miami. Maybe Chargers GM AJ Smith knew what he was doing when he didn't resign the aging Tomlinson after all.

Mark Sanchez was completely ineffective for the second week in a row. While he did drop a perfectly thrown ball into Holmes' hands that should have been caught for a touchdown, for most of the afternoon Sanchez looked like a young quarterback. Sanchez was 17-44 for 216 yards, an interception, and 4 fumbles, 1 of which was lost. Sure, Sanchez should have had a touchdown pass to Holmes, but he easily could have been intercepted 3 or 4 times as well. After not throwing an interception in the first 5 games of the season, Sanchez has now thrown an interception in 8 straight games, an alarming trend that needs correcting. As bad as Sanchez has looked in the last two weeks, he has also shown a lot of cojones in clutch situations in his young career and it would seem that the Jets do have a quarterback they'll be able to count on for a long time.

Perhaps the worst part of yesterday's game was when Dolphins CB Nolan Carroll was tripped by the Jets strength and conditioning coach, Sal Alosi, along the sideline during a punt late in the 3rd quarter. As Rex Ryan said in the preseason on Hard Knocks there is a difference between having fun and acting like a jackass. Right now the Jets are acting like a bunch of jackasses and this display by Alosi further illustrates that.

After losing 2 straight and falling to 9-4 with trips to Pittsburgh and Chicago looming the Jets have reached a crisis point. I still think that the Jets are one of the 4 best teams in the AFC and I expect them to be playing at New England or Pittsburgh in the 2nd week of the playoffs, but right now they sure look like the same old Jets...