Quick Fix: Jets perfect the art of bend-but-not-break
Bending - but not breaking - defensively has been a central tenet of many Jets defenses in the past. The glass half full view of such defenses is that they stiffen up close to their own goal line to keep an opponent from scoring touchdowns, whereas a less rose-tinted viewpoint would suggest they just got moved on easily only to get lucky when the other team was about to score.
There were elements of both to yesterday's performance, which saw the Browns turn the ball over three times on the Jets' doorstep. Had they just been more careful with the ball and settled for three field goals, then maybe they win the game. Of course, they missed two field goals as well, so even that wouldn't have been a sure thing.
Let's look at each of these plays in turn.
First of all, here was Freddie Bishop's fumble recovery on 3rd-and-goal:
The main thing to note here is that the Jets got really lucky. Bishop let the back around the edge for a first down when the Browns ran the same play later on and the only reason this one didn't also work was because of the bad pitch. As you can see, at the moment Isaiah Crowell should have been making a clean catch, he has a definite angle to get to the pylon:
Credit Demario Davis with anticipating and getting ahead of Shon Coleman's block, but it still would have been a tough ask for him to prevent Crowell from scoring there, as Marcus Maye is cleanly driven out of the play.
While there was good fortune there, the next stop - on Maye's interception - had more to do with good anticipation on Maye's part:
Quite simply, Maye reads the route and undercuts it, making a clean catch as the throw is right to him.
The fortunate element here is that Deshone Kizer is still inexperienced in such situations. Maybe a better quarterback sees Maye undercutting the route and delays the throw half a beat so he has an angle or puts some touch on it over the top. If either of those was too risky, he perhaps should have anticipated the risk and just thrown it away.
With the Jets up by three, the Browns eschewed the chance to tie the score with a chip-shot field goal and the Jets made this fourth down stop, after which they would drive 97 yards to go up by two scores:
Officially, Jordan Jenkins got the credit for this tackle, but actually he just ended up on top of the pile. The Browns ran right at Muhammad Wilkerson, who held his ground well to force the run inside. It gets bottled up there with Demario Davis being the first body into the hole to gum up the works.
In the past, it's often been Jets teams that have moved the ball well but struggled in the red zone. However, yesterday, they were able to take advantage of the Browns' inadequacies in those situations and this proved to be the difference between the teams.
PREVIOUSLY: Reviewing the rotations