The players-only meeting did the Jets no favors. The offense was as bad as it’s ever been, if not even worse, and the Jets finally made a change at the quarterback position. The defense finally caved because you can only be so great for so long. The Jets just about hit rock bottom in a 32-6 loss to the Buffalo Bills to fall to 4-6. Here’s your quick notes from the game as the season is quickly becoming lost.
Final score: Bills 32, Jets 6
Game notes
- The biggest story of the game is that the Jets finally made the long-awaited change at quarterback, benching Zach Wilson for Tim Boyle. Wilson went 7 of 15 for 81 yards, one touchdown, one interception, was sacked five times and had a quarterback rating of 57.9.
- So much for that players-only meeting and Saleh’s promise of personnel changes and schematic changes. Somehow, the offense looked even worse than it ever did. Receivers couldn’t catch passes, the constant shuffling along the offensive line started catching up to the team and they even made a change at kick returner, putting Izzy Abanikanda in for Xavier Gipson.
- The line also couldn’t help create a run game. Fun fact: You, yes you reading this article, had the same amount of rushing yards in the first half as Breece Hall. That’s right, Hall had a big fat goose egg on the ground at the half. He finished with 23 rushing yards and did have 50 receiving yards.
- Garrett Wilson had nine yards receiving. Allen Lazard had nothing. However, in his defense, he did have a catch (albeit short of the first-down marker) negated by a defensive pass interference penalty.
- The Jets actually scored a red-zone touchdown! Just too bad they’re still extremely bad on third down. New York went 0/11 on third down.
- Quinnen Williams finally scored his first full sack of the season in Week 11. He had two games with a half-sack each. He now has two sacks on the year. Williams is still having a strong year, but folks will downgrade him because he only has two sacks, considering he had 12 last season.
- The Jets are now two games out of a playoff spot at 4-6. The Texans and Steelers are 6-4. With this mess, two games feel like Mount Everest for the Jets. At this point, a top-10 pick is more likely.
- All of a sudden, that second-half schedule that looked so easy now seems like it’s hard to find a win. Their remaining schedule: vs. Miami, vs. Atlanta, vs. Houston, at Miami, vs. Washington, at Cleveland, at New England. New York may actually end up with a worse record than last year’s 7-10.
- Frustrations are boiling over for the Jets. Players got into it during the game and then even after the game.
- Head coach Robert Saleh told reporters after the game he hasn’t made a decision on who will start next week at quarterback. He didn’t rule out Trevor Siemian but said he’ll make a decision Monday.
- Bottom line: this team is broken and it needs a lot of repair.
It was over when...
…the Jets once again couldn’t get going on offense early and this was a game where a slow start doomed the Jets very early. Things only got worse from there.
3 stars of the game
Normally, we’d pick three stars of the game here…but were there really three stars today? Just about everything was a flat-out embarrassment for the Jets.
But we will give a shoutout to punter Thomas Morstead and his 18-yard pass on a fake punt that could have been more if Brandin Echols hadn’t stepped out of bounds. Incredibly, that was about 25 percent of what Zach Wilson finished with.
Play of the game
We’ll again shout out Thomas Morstead’s fake punt here because there really wasn’t any other highlight except for maybe the touchdown to Breece Hall.
.@thomasmorstead showing off the cannon (arm) to @matayo_echols.#NYJvsBUF on CBS & Paramount+ pic.twitter.com/QJ8J4dZiUh
— New York Jets (@nyjets) November 19, 2023
What's next?
What’s next is trying to fix a team that is majorly broken and at their absolute worst. They now have to figure out who the quarterback is going forward and somehow make the offense watchable. And they have less time before their next game as the Jets host the Miami Dolphins on Friday. Good luck.
