Jets quarterback Chad Pennington was 11-for-21 passing for 128 yards with an interception on Sunday.
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J., Oct. 14 — It was a situation that seemed to play to Chad Pennington’s strengths: the Jets were inside the red zone, with the game on the line, and Laveranues Coles, the receiver with whom Pennington has a telepathic connection, was streaking toward the end zone.
The Jets were trailing the Philadelphia Eagles, 16-9, late in the fourth quarter when Pennington lofted the ball to Coles in the end zone on a fourth-and-1. It was a timing play they have completed like clockwork many times before, but on Sunday, as has been the case all season, the magic was missing.
The ball fell incomplete and the Jets lost for the third consecutive week. The Eagles, meantime, improved to 2-3 — and 9-0 after a bye week under Coach Andy Reid.
The Jets’ defense gave up some big plays — running back Brian Westbrook finished with 120 yards rushing and 36 receiving yards. But it was the offense, which has seemed strangely anemic under Pennington’s command, that drew boos from the Meadowlands crowd.
Brian Schottenheimer, the Jets’ offensive coordinator, had vowed on Friday to get the running game going. Sounding like a mechanic fresh from tinkering under the hood of a stalled car, he talked about identifying the problems and fixing them.
Whatever adjustments Schottenheimer made during the week looked like genius when Thomas Jones peeled out of the gate. On the Jets’ first play from scrimmage, he burst through a hole opened by left guard Adrien Clarke and sprinted 36 yards. It was the Jets’ longest run from scrimmage, far outdistancing Jones’s jaunts of 12 yards in three of the first five games.
The Jets rushed for 55 yards in the drive — 47 by Jones and 8 by Leon Washington — to set up a 30-yard field goal by Mike Nugent. They had 94 yards on the ground by the end of the quarter, which was 17 more than they were averaging per game.
Along with not being able to run the ball consistently, the Jets had not been able to tackle with any consistency. After missing 14 tackles in the 11-point loss to the Giants, the Jets incorporated one-on-one tackling drills into their practices last week.
It looked like a lot of wasted effort when receiver Kevin Curtis caught a short pass from quarterback Donovan McNabb on the Eagles’ opening series and shrugged off tackles by Andre Dyson and Eric Smith to turn a gain of a few yards into a 75-yard score.
A wicked wind made kicking into the east end zone an odyssey for both teams’ place kickers. Nugent missed wide right on a 44-yard attempt in the first quarter and the Eagles’ David Akers, who has converted 81.8 percent of his tries in nine years in the league, missed wide right from 41 yards twice in the second after making one from 22 on the second play of the quarter.
Akers’s first miss from 41 had the power to take the air out of the Eagles, coming as it did at the end of a 17-play drive that chewed 8 minutes, 18 seconds off the clock. But Pennington could not get the Jets’ offense rolling no matter how hard he cranked his arm and threw.
Pennington’s strong point has always been his accuracy and game management, but for the third consecutive week he made questionable decisions. He threw into triple coverage in the end zone early in the second quarter, trying to loft a pass to Jerricho Cotchery when the circumstances called for a dart. The pass was nearly intercepted and the Jets settled for a field goal.
In the third minute of the second half, Coles ran a crisp route to get open along the sideline but Pennington misfired on the throw. On the Jets’ next possession, he was intercepted by cornerback Sheldon Brown on an underthrown ball that was intended for Brad Smith.
Pennington was 11-for-21 passing for 128 yards but the only number that really matters is this: 1-5, which is how far the Jets have fallen from their 10-6 season of a year ago.
Best part though was the Jets wearing those cool New York Titans uniforms in remembrance of their roots. The Titans was the forerunner name of the New York Jets during its first two years when they were part of the old American Football League (AFL).
No comments:
Post a Comment