We’ve been breaking down this week’s game. We conclude today’s postgame analysis with a look at the special teams.
Let’s review the key contributions…
Kicking game – Thomas Ousted
Other than holding on a trio of placekick attempts (two of which missed), punter Thomas Morstead didn’t get to play this week because the Jets went for it and failed three times on fourth down.
Anders Carlson had a key role though. He made a chip shot field goal but missed an extra point and then his missed 49-yard field goal essentially ended the Jets’ attempted comeback. There was no pressure on the ones he missed but Max Mitchell allowed pressure on the one he made.
Carlson didn’t have a touchback on either of his kickoffs either, but the kicks were fielded near the goal line and covered well.
The Jaguars also missed an extra point with Brandin Echols getting pressure off the edge. He had another pressure later on but that one was good.
Return game – Xavier Unworthy
Xavier Gipson cost the Jets the game this week as he muffed a punt with less than two minutes to go to allow the Rams to run out the clock. New York would have had to score twice with no timeouts though, so the game was probably already over. Both vices – Kendall Sheffield and Qwan’tez Stiggers were beaten by the gunners, which didn’t help.
Prior to that, he had been having one of his best ever games as a kickoff returner with three returns for 99 yards. That’s a career-high in yardage and the second best average he’s ever had in a single-game.
The longest runback was 42 yards behind good blocks by Sam Eguavoen and Yeboah. His other two got out near the 30 behind an Isaiah Davis block and a Sheffield block as he broke a tackle on one of them.
He’s now up to 29.6 yards per kickoff return which would put him among the league leaders (in 3rd place). However, he will need to return seven kicks in the last two games to have returned enough to qualify.
The only other punt was left to bounce inside the five by Gipson and ultimately downed at the one-yard line. He was 10th out of 13 qualifiers on punt returners entering this week.
Kick coverage – McCrary-Ballin’ Out
With no punts and only two kickoffs, the Jets didn’t get to do much kick coverage work this week, but the two plays they did make in coverage were solid, which is a good sign because they had looked shaky since Irv Charles got hurt.
Both were stopped near the 20 with an illegal block in the back penalty on one of those, drawn by Ashtyn Davis.
Marcelino McCrary-Ball was in on both stops, with Kenny Yeboah in on the stop on one of them. McCrary-Ball now has seven tackles in 10 games and is tied for second on the team in special teams tackles, four behind Chazz Surratt.
We’ll be back with the 3-on-D and 3-on-O over the next few days…