Those weren’t the Rex Ryan Jets who returned following their bye week yesterday. They were the Wrecks.
From the head coach who didn’t preserve his challenges, to the quarterback who too often forgot how to be accurate, to the offensive coordinator whose predictable tendencies were devoured by Dom Capers and the Packers, to the wide receivers who couldn’t catch the damn ball, to the field goal kicker who missed a 37-yarder after the Pro Bowl center was flagged for holding on second-and-2, to the punter who improvised on fourth-and-18 from his 20 and failed on a fake punt that led to a field goal . . .
W-R-E-C-K-S, WRECKS, WRECKS, WRECKS.
So many reasons for Packers 9, Wrecks 0.
But if you only have two bullets remaining for the firing line, then hand the blindfold and the cigarette to Ryan (0-2 after bye weeks) and Mark Sanchez (16-38, 256 yards, 2 INTs).
Ryan needed his quarterback to rescue him yesterday, and Sanchez was off the mark. “Poor performance by myself and it’s tough to get an offense going when your quarterback’s not playing well,” Sanchez said.
The Packers somehow grounded and pounded Ryan’s Ground & Pound, and dared Sanchez to beat them.
“The key was slowing down their running game, and just try to put the ball in Sanchez’s hands,” Packers safety Nick Collins said.
The Wrecks’ pass-run ratio was an upside-down 38-29. Collins was asked what he observed about Sanchez yesterday. “I don’t think they trust . . they only have a select few plays that they’d let him run,” Collins said. “That’s what I saw today. I don’t know what the deal is, I’m just a player. But observing a quarterback like that on a great team with all the big names, you expect them to be going downfield, you know, doing all types of stuff, but they sometimes get complacent.”
Dustin Keller and Braylon Edwards were virtually invisible in the first half. Sanchez, bless his heart, even went so far as to blame himself for not giving Santonio Holmes, crossing left to right underneath, a perfect pass on a ball that Holmes should have caught and taken to the house for a 45-yard touchdown at the start of the second half.
But his worst moment — wrestle interceptions by Tramon Williams and Charles Woodson aside — came on a third-and-8 at the Green Bay 35, when the Wrecks trailed 6-0. He threw incomplete in the end zone for Jerricho Cotchery on a day when the wind was playing havoc with his deep balls. “If I could do it all over again, I think I just might try and find somebody else underneath, or take off and run,” Sanchez said. On fourth-and-8, incomplete high for Cotchery. Sanchez had one last chance to save the day, from his 23, 3:50 and no timeouts left. Three-and-out. “I just need to be better with my accuracy,” Sanchez said. “For every dropped ball today, I think there was twice as many poor throws on my part.”
Williams’ pick came in the second quarter, at his 40, against Cotchery. “I recognized the formation,” Williams said, “the routes that they do out of that formation, I just stuck to what I studied.”
Ryan never should have thrown the red flag there. He had already lost a challenge on a Brad Smith fumble at the start of the second quarter. “Probably shouldn’t have challenged that one, because it was too hard to tell, I guess, but we felt good about it,” Ryan said. With no margin for error, he should have let the Williams pick stand so early in the game. Inconclusive will always be inconclusive. “I clearly thought that our receiver had possession of the football, but worse comes to worse, it was dual possession, which is the offensive player’s football when they were on the ground,” Ryan said.
What if he could have challenged Woodson’s interception? “I don’t see what would have been different if I would have challenged the Dustin Keller one, because it was the exact same thing,” Ryan said. “I’m sure that would have been Green Bay’s ball anyway.”
But who can say for sure? You don’t give your team its best chance to win if you leave yourself without a challenge for the second half.
Ryan didn’t see this one coming. “We were fresher and healthier than we’ve ever been,” he said. “We never got it done.” Wrecks’ Jets.