All during the Jets-Bills’ game yesterday and now again around the Internet on Monday morning I keep reading about how Gang Green’s run game didn’t show up. Huh? I’m looking at the box score, and it says the Jets ran the ball 23 times for 138 yards — six yards per carry.
That’s far and away the Jets’ best single-game per-carry average on the season, which makes sense given the way their offensive line was manhandling the Bills’ defensive front. All game long Mark Sanchez, despite plenty of time to throw, is dangerously mixing aggressiveness with inaccuracy. And yet the Jets still pass the ball nearly twice as often as they run it.
So much for ground and pound, eh?
Whatever. They won the game. It shouldn’t have been nearly so exciting, though. And it’s frustrating because when the line’s playing as well as it did yesterday, in Shonn Greene and Joe McKnight you can start to see the vague suggestion of an awesome and very potent thunder-and-lightning type backfield platoon that could combine with the Jets’ defense to chew up game clock and win lots of football games.
Only then, just when you think it’s about to start happening, for some reason Sanchez is lined up in the shotgun with an empty backfield.
I know Brian Schottenheimer has become sort of a great Jets-fan bugaboo, and I’m participating. He’s far from the team’s only problem. Until the last drive, Sanchez played terribly yesterday. His touchdown-heavy statline bails him out, but it was not a good game.