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On ESPN’s pregame show, Rex Ryan told a story we covered in the Sept. 5 MMQB—one that explained how the outgrowth of Ryan ripping Jets coach Robert Saleh was a conversation between the two that led to material changes in the team’s roster. Ryan explained to Saleh the value he got in bringing program guys such as Bart Scott and Jim Leonhard with him from the Ravens to the Jets and suggested the Jets coach do the same in Year 2.
Saleh took Ryan’s words to heart, and imported Kwon Alexander, Laken Tomlinson and D.J. Reed, who were with him in San Francisco.
The result, as the guys there see it now, is a Jets team that’s more bonded now than in recent memory. And those ties, the players think, along with the experience many of those players have from winning programs, are starting to change the face of a team that carries the longest playoff drought in the NFL.
So you want to know how Jets 27, Packers 10 happens? It starts right there.
“You can feel the confidence,” linebacker C.J. Mosley told me postgame. “All game, especially, and obviously on defense, I know the only thing we would talk about is executing our drive. When we get back on the field, let’s make sure we execute—Don’t give up anything easy; make them earn every single yard. And I feel like that’s what we did the majority of the day. We didn’t worry about the score; we didn’t worry about who was in or who was going to do what. Once we saw a formation, we knew what they wanted to do and we executed.”
They did to the point where an interesting quarterback battle in this one pitting an all-time-great Aaron Rodgers against a promising, improving former top-five pick Zach Wilson was rendered, more or less, irrelevant.
Wilson threw for just 110 yards on 10-of-18 passing without a touchdown. Rodgers, on the other hand, threw for more than double that (246), and didn’t throw a pick, with three different Packers recording at least three catches. The problem, for the hosts, was that the Jets won just about everywhere else.
They outrushed the Packers nearly three times over (179–60) behind Breece Hall, part of a bumper crop of rookies. They limited receivers Allen Lazard and Romeo Doubs to the point where both caught less than half the balls thrown their way. Rodgers was sacked four times and fumbled twice (losing one of them).
And a lot of being able to cross the Packers up was a result of the relationships between the staffs—Jets coach Robert Saleh was in Packers coach Matt LaFleur’s wedding (and vice versa), and LaFleur’s little brother, Mike, is Saleh’s offensive coordinator.
“With the game plan we had, we knew everybody just had to do their job,” Mosley says. “We know when we went in Cover 1, then we had to align our corners and our DBs, and we knew our D-line was going to have to get back there and cause pressure. And when we were in zone, we know Aaron likes to get the ball across the middle, get it to his backs and let them make plays. I felt like when they did get the ball, we were there. They didn’t get a lot of yards after catch and obviously with the run game, I feel like we did a really good job with that.”
The really wild thing is after Micheal Clemons blocked a Pat O’Donnell punt in the third quarter, and Will Parks returned it 39 yards for a touchdown to give the Jets a 17–3 lead, the visitors had a counterpunch for everything the Packers threw at them. After Parks’s touchdown, Rodgers took the Packers 75 yards in six plays to make it 17–10, and the Jets turned right around and went 55 yards in six plays, with Hall scoring from 34 yards out to answer. The Packers drove again, but the Jets tightened up on the fringe of field goal range.
This doesn’t feel like the old Jets, at this point, with a three-game winning streak, the rookie class shining, and the team a game out of first. Alone in second place in the AFC East, it’s fair to ask whether the Jets might be the division’s second-best team? We’ll find out soon with three consecutive AFC East games (two against the Patriots, one against Buffalo) coming after next Sunday’s game in Denver.
For now, the good news is the Jets seem ready for all that—and, as much as anything, it’s because they have players who have been through it before.
“I don’t take any of the time that I’ve been with the Jets for granted, because wins are hard to come by, no matter who you play for,” says Mosley, a former Raven. “But I just hope that every time we win these type of games, whether we’re home or away, that we’ll reflect on what it took to get to where we are now. The work, the time we had to put in, each player individually working on whatever little things helped him get better for that week, for each other.
“And I just really feel that the way we just go out and work every day, it’s not caring about who the opponent is, not caring about if it’s America’s Game, not worried about none of that. We’re just going to go out here, execute and show what type of football team we are.”
To this point, we can say it looks like a much better one.
Danielle Parhizkaran/NorthJersey.com/USA TODAY Sports
If I’d told you in early September that one of the New York teams would be 4–2 after six weeks and would have the worst record of the two, you wouldn’t have believed me.
That’s where we are right now. The Jets are 4–2, and the Giants are 5–1.
And as the current leader among Jersey’s NFL entries, it seems like the Giants have a new hero just about every week. So here’s one for this week that the national audience might’ve missed—defensive coordinator Wink Martindale.
The 59-year-old veteran of nearly two decades on NFL sidelines was front and center in the second New York upset Sunday, helping the Giants put the brakes on the Lamar Jackson MVP freight train and a Ravens team that came in rolling.
Martindale, of course, did it playing with a pretty notable advantage—he spent the past decade coaching defense in Baltimore, having been coordinator there the last four years, and was something of a mentor to Mike Macdonald, whom John Harbaugh tabbed to replace Martindale after coaching seven previous years with him. All the same, he and the Giants knew the challenge was going to be a stiff one.
Which is why leading into the Giants’ 24–20 win Sunday, Martindale wanted to start on a very basic level with his players, stressing the importance of assignment football.
“It was a challenge,” fourth-year safety Julian Love says. “This is the best offense in the league, one of the best, and really it was a huge do-your-job type of game. When we were man coverage on 89 [Mark Andrews], who’s dangerous, you have to be locked into him. We have to know where he is all the time. And with Lamar, you got to try to contain him any way you can, because when he scrambles, he’s dangerous.
“It wasn’t perfect by any means today. The plan was a great plan, but they’re a great offense. And so we just made critical plays in critical situations that helped us get the win.”
And no one made a bigger one than Love. With 3:04 left and leading 20–17, the Ravens faced third-and-5 from their own 40.
Jackson lost a bad snap, had to chase it down, then scrambled to his right to try to avoid the rush and make a play. Unfortunately for him, Love got a bead on where he’d be going with the ball.
“Bobbled snap and when that happens, anything can happen really, especially with a quarterback like Lamar,” Love says. “So he got it, and I saw his eyes immediately downfield and so I saw 42 [fullback Pat Ricard] kind of open, and I really just baited the throw and hoped that he would try to make a play and push it downfield. And he did.
“It’s moments like that where you just got to take advantage of.”
Love did, staying behind Ricard until Jackson let it go, breaking on the ball, picking it, and running it back from the Ravens’ 40 to their 13. Four snaps later, Saquon Barkley barreled in from a yard out to give the Giants the lead for good.
And the defense wasn’t done, either. Two plays after that touchdown, rookie rusher Kayvon Thibodeaux strip-sacked Jackson to finish the Ravens off.
So went the afternoon for a defense that, out of nowhere, is playing at a pretty high level for a really experienced coordinator.
“He lets us play to all our strengths and allows us to grow new strengths to our game,” Love says. “He also gives us a chance to try in different areas. I’ve never really blitzed before and in the beginning of the season, I was blitzing a little bit. And so stuff like that, he just sees potential in players and he helps to unlock that. And on top of that, yeah, we just have good players who are resilient and tough who have been overlooked for a long time. And so he really was honest in his assessment of us when he got here, and realized what we could do.
“He’s been trying to play to our personnel, really.”
Which, in fact, dovetails nicely into how Brian Daboll and Mike Kafka are getting the most out of the offensive personnel—moving the pocket for Daniel Jones, using Barkley out of the wildcat, etc., etc.
That’s no mistake, either.
As Love and I talked Sunday afternoon, he ran into Eli Manning and asked me whether he could take a minute to say hello. He and the Giants legend made small talk for a minute, not groundbreaking, then moved on with their postgame.
But it was another reminder to Love, who’s in a contract year, in what he’s looking to do with the Giants now that he’s on his fourth coach.
“I mean, I’m in my fourth year here and you’d be …” he said, pausing. “You’d be kidding yourself if you don’t want to be at a place and leave it better than it was when you got there. So that’s kind of my mindset.”
The Giants, to be sure, are better than they’ve been in a long time.
As for Love’s goal, a lot of folks are set up to have the Giants in a better place this year than when they got there. And as a result, there’ll probably be more than a few that will have the chance to keep building with the new group past this year, too.
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For all the Colts have been through, and as bad as they’ve looked at points through six weeks, they’re tied with the Titans atop the AFC South at 3-2-1.
And listen to enough people there, and you’ll understand how they think the supposed demise of quarterback Matt Ryan was greatly exaggerated. Last week, Ryan showed guts and a capability to will the Colts down the field with the game on the line on an ugly Thursday night in Denver for everyone. This time, Indianapolis needed him to light up a Jaguars team that had become a nightmare for the Colts playing from behind. He was capable of that, too.
As was the case against the Broncos, Ryan and the Indianapolis offense looked hopeless for a time against Jacksonville. As was the case against the Broncos, they fought through it.
“Well, let me start out with this—I really don’t like doing comparative things, because as soon I say stuff, people will direct it back at Carson [Wentz], and it has nothing to do with Carson,” says Michael Pittman Jr., who caught 13 balls for 134 yards from Ryan on Sunday. “Matt and Carson are different players, it’s like, O.K., so every time I say something good about Matt, people turn it around and be like, Ohh, Carson. No, I love Carson Wentz, man.
“But speaking about Matt’s character, Matt is an absolute leader, and he’s just the ultimate competitor. That man wants to cause shots, and he’s going to hit ’em, and like he just never flinches in any situation. Man, like, he just gets up and keeps playing.”
Which shows in how the Colts have become pretty thick-skinned over the past two weeks.
This week meant exorcising some metaphorical demons.
Between last year’s trainwreck of a season finale, plus a 24–0 shutout in Week 2 at Jacksonville and Sunday’s slow start, the Jags were in the midst of a 64–14 run on the Colts over the past nine months. And the truth was there was something unspoken between all the players and coaches, who’d battled sluggish starts all year, that preempted anyone throwing a monitor at a wall in the meeting rooms.
“I mean, nothing was really said,” Pittman says. “We just don’t panic. I feel like we’ve been in that position a lot this year, as much as we don’t want to be in that position, we just never flinched. And we’re just very confident, like as an offense, we just have to get it started sooner. And then games will start looking a lot different. It’d be nice to not have to go down and just do a two-minute drive, but it just seems like that’s the way that we’ve been finding our wins lately.”
This was the fourth of six games that the Colts faced a deficit of 14 points or more. They fought to make all but the Jaguars’ loss competitive—and the past couple of weeks, with Ryan in command, they’ve pulled two rabbits out of their hats, with the one Sunday having a little more hop than the win in Denver.
When I asked Pittman why it’s played out that way, or whether the team’s found something the past couple of weeks, he deflected by saying, “I mean, I have no idea. I just line up and run routes, to be honest with you. So that’s probably a Coach Reich question. I just play here.”
So going back to my conversation with Frank Reich coming out of the Denver game, what I learned was that the Colts’ biggest source of frustration has been their inability to properly manage down and distance. There have been too many second-and-longs and too many third-and-longs. And add that to the reworked offensive line and, more recently, the absence of Jonathan Taylor, and you get something that looks different than it was intended to look.
At the very least, it looks like small steps were taken in that area Sunday. The Colts, on their final two scoring drives, one of 11 plays, the other of nine, scored touchdowns while only falling behind the original line of scrimmage once. That one time they did get behind the sticks? Ryan lofted a beautiful 32-yard pass to Alec Pierce on third-and-13 to win the game.
So, no, it’s not perfect. Reich still has to find the right five on the offensive line. Taylor has to get healthy. But there’s also something to build on here, and that’s a resiliency that seems to come from the guy playing quarterback.
