New York Jets' Week 10 Report Card: Grading Each Unit

For the second year in a row, the Jets failed to seize first place in the AFC East in a game against the New England Patriots and lost 37-16 Sunday night.

The Jets now sit at 5-4, tied with the struggling Buffalo Bills for second in the AFC East, while the Patriots are in first with a 6-3 record.

It was a game of mistakes for the Jets as they sustained their first home loss of the year. They turned the ball over three times and even missed a 24-yard field goal in the opening drive.

The Jets showed promise though, taking a 9-6 lead with 1:20 left to go until halftime. The Pats were able to use that remaining time to score a touchdown and never looked back.

It's hard to put the blame on one area, but here are the grades for each unit on the Jets for their Week 10 loss against the Pats.

Passing Game: D+

The Pats defense had the worst secondary coming into Sunday night and Mark Sanchez could’ve easily made a statement, but he didn’t and failed to show up.

Sanchez looked very shaky. He threw for 305 yards but don’t let that stat fool you; 100 yards came from when the Jets were down 21. He also threw two interceptions; one wasn’t his fault but he had a couple of passes that he got lucky on.

The other interception came up when the Jets were down 14 and Sanchez threw a horrible pass to Shonn Greene that resulted in a pick-six—and the end of the game for the Jets.

A very questionable timeout by Sanchez also stopped the clock with 1:24 left in the first half, which gave Brady time to lead a touchdown drive. Rex Ryan called it “the stupidest play in football history.”

Sanchez doesn’t deserve all the blame though; he was pressured all night as the offensive line couldn’t handle the Pats pass rush. The defense also couldn’t provide a stop for Sanchez after a touchdown drive in the fourth quarter made the Jets’ deficit 14 instead of seven.

The receivers played pretty well besides Greene getting hit in the chest with the ball and allowing an interception.

Overall, any quarterback has to take advantage any time you play the worst defense in the league and Sanchez didn’t, raising many questions for the rest of the year.

Running Game: B

The running game was one of the only bright spots for the Jets, and it wasn’t even that bright.

Shonn Greene was consistent and rushed for four or five yards almost each play and was pretty reliable in the running game.

LT also played pretty well on the ground, breaking out a key 15-yard rush that helped spark a touchdown.

The Jets running game played as well as it could getting only 20 carries—but they could’ve done better by busting out a big run, which Greene has yet to do this year.

Offensive Line: D

Between blocking for the run and blocking the pass rush, the offensive line looked like night and day.

The offensive line looked pretty good run-blocking, allowing for Greene and Tomlinson to have pretty good games. But pass blocking was a whole different story.

The offensive line couldn’t figure out the Patriots pass rush, and Sanchez paid the price.

Sanchez was sacked five times with Andre Carter having a field day, settting a team record for sacks in a game for the Pats with 4.5

The Jets’ offensive line need to do better protecting Sanchez, especially Thursday when they face the Broncos.

The Broncos are in the top 10 in the league sacks with 24 and recently came off a four-sack game against the Chiefs.

Defense: D

The Jets took away the rushing game, which is something the failed to do in the previous matchup, but they had no answers for Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski.

The coverage was able to handle Brady in the first half, only allowing one touchdown, but got exposed the second half.

The secondary simply could not stop Gronkowski, who absolutely exposed safety Eric Smith.  The Jets also had several blown coverages and looked dumb-founded every time the Pats ran a bunch formation.

Brady was also able take advantage of the Jets defense by running a no-huddle, which prevented substitutions and caught the Jets when they were tired or not ready.

One of the reasons Brady had so much success was because of how much time he had. The Jets provided almost no pressure the whole game, besides the safety the Jets forced. They had no sacks and every time they provided pressure, they fell at the feet of Brady.

Darrelle Revis was about the only bright spot as he shutdown Wes Welker to only 46 yards—but that’s not a surprise.

Luckily for the Jets, they probably won’t let up over 300 yards next game as they are facing Tim Tebow on Thursday, who only completed two passes against the Chiefs.

Special Teams: F-

The Jets special teams overall was just flat-out awful today, so awful that an F just doesn’t give them justice.

Nick Folk had one field goal attempt from 24 yards on the first drive. If that’s bad enough, he somehow managed to miss really bad with no wind at all.

The Patriots also picked up a 15-yard penalty after a touchdown, moving the Jets kickoff up. Instead of kicking it in the field of play and possible pinning the Pats deep, T.J. Conley decided to kick it as far as he could, putting them at the 20.

Then the Jets switched punt returners three times and it eventually cost them when Joe McKnight let a ball go right through his arms. This helped set up a Pats field goal in the third quarter.

McKnight did pretty good returning returning two of his four kick returns for 38 yards, but his fumble killed a lot of momentum for the Jets. 

Coaching: D-

The coaching today was very sloppy as they couldn’t adjust on both sides of the ball.

Rex Ryan, Mike Pettine and the defensive coaches simply had no idea how to adjust to Brady and Gronkowski. They simply had no answers for anything on defense and Brady could do whatever he wanted  especially with the no-huddles he ran.

On offense, Brian Schottenheimer failed to take advantage of a banged-up Patriots secondary that was ranked last in the league. They were missing arguably their two best players in Patrick Chung and Devin McCourty, and despite this the Jets took little to no deep shots down the field.

Overall: D

This was the Jets’ game to take away the crown from the Patriots as king of the AFC East.

It was a huge game, but like last year when faced with the same type of game, they absolutely choked and will continue to play second fiddle to the Pats.

Almost everyone played bad, and it’s hard to put the blame on one person or area.

This is a huge momentum blow to the Jets because, instead of being first in the AFC East, they are now tied for third in the Wild Card standings. 

The Jets will try and rebound Thursday when they play the red-hot Broncos, who are 3-1 in their last four games.

The only good thing I could say about this game is, at least the score wasn’t 45-3 like last year when the Jets played the Pats.