After each game, we’ll be highlighting three defensive and three offensive players and looking in detail at their performance. We’ll start today with the defense:
Surratt you can’t be serious
With CJ Mosley suffering a neck injury in pre-game workouts, against a team where the Jets would have been planning to play a lot of base packages and having said “Just got to go out there and do our job and know when [adversity] comes, let’s respond the right way.” just a few days before, it’s fair to say that losing him wasn’t exactly ideal.
On the face of it, Chazz Surratt managed to make some good contributions in an increased role as a result of Mosley’s absence. He had only gave up one six-yard catch in coverage and had five tackles including two for loss.
Both those tackles for loss were good plays, although he was unblocked on both and his other three tackles all came more than five yards down the field.
The bigger issue was the importance of his negatives. His job on this play was to spy Drake Maye and his misstep to the inside cost the Jets a touchdown.
Surratt was also too slow to fill the hole on Rhamondre Stevenson’s first touchdown run.
Finally, on the fourth down play where Stevenson scored the winning touchdown, Leonard Taylor almost made a sensational game-winning play as he slipped a block at the line and then took on another blocker to bottle up the run. However, Surratt and Sherwood were both a step slow to fill the hole, enabling Stevenson to build up just enough momentum to break the plane.
Missing Mosley doesn’t seem like it has hurt that much because Jamien Sherwood has made plenty of good plays in his absence. However, the unit as a whole has suffered and the team is mired in a losing streak. You have to wonder if that would have been the case with Mosley healthy.
From the sublime to the Reddickulous
Haason Reddick’s Jets debut saw him play 26 snaps, most of which were in the second half. While he didn’t crack the stat sheet, he was arguably unlucky not to get credit for an assist in the running game and a half-sack.
Reddick did have a couple of pressures with this probably being his best pass rush rep:
However, it seemed like he was a bit rusty – slow out of his stance and too easily redirected when trying to get upfield or stunted inside. Hopefully, he will shake off this rust soon because the Jets need him to play at a high level to elevate their defense.
While he wasn’t used much in run defense situations, Reddick did have one solid rep against the run as he set the edge to stretch this run to the outside and got in on the tackle.
Let’s hope we have more impact plays to consider the next time we break Reddick down.
Jarius through the storm
Jarius Monroe has been on the practice squad all year and was elevated to make his NFL debut in light of the injuries to Chuck Clark, Ashtyn Davis and Tony Adams.
He only played a couple of snaps in the majority of the game, but was on the field during the final drive as New England went in for the winning score. That wasn’t, however, because they went into a prevent-style defense. Instead, this happened because Deuce Carter got hurt once again so Isaiah Oliver moved into the slot. It’s interesting that they turned to Monroe in that situation instead of going to Brandin Echols and leaving Oliver at safety.
Although he was only in for eight snaps, Monroe was involved in some significant moments.
His safety blitz almost got home but he didn’t hit Jacoby Brissett cleanly and Brissett completed a 33-yard pass down the field under heavy pressure.
On another play he ended up isolated on Demario Douglas as he ran a route to the pylon. Monroe stayed with Douglas well on that one and Maye went to another option.
Finally, the Pats rushed to the line quickly after the touchdown was confirmed and Monroe collided with Sauce Gardner to set up the easy two-point conversion.
That play didn’t prove to be crucial but easily could have if the Jets had managed to get into field goal range somehow.
For Monroe, he was thrown into the fire and relied upon to be the next man up. While he wasn’t necessarily to blame for the Jets allowing New England to score, you need to be perfect in those end of game situations and the rookie was not.
Three-on-O will follow tomorrow.