Encouraging Showing by Jets Still Ends in Loss to Broncos
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. - They did not curse out any paying customers, they did not forget what time zone they were in, they advanced the ball past midfield before the fourth quarter, and they - really, truly - scored a point. More than one, actually.
Progress is measured incrementally around the Jets, who succumbed, 31-17, to the Denver Broncos on Sunday, their fifth consecutive defeat, but still managed to succeed on one front.
They were not nearly as inept as they were last week in San Diego, when a shutout loss, combined with Geno Smith's missing a team meeting, consigned the Jets to ridicule and turned them, again, into a punch line.
After that loss to the Chargers, Rex Ryan apologized to Jets fans - to those who were left, he said. Much of the lower bowl at MetLife Stadium on Sunday was dominated by orange, but the Jets fans who did show up were encouraged by a defense that slowed a prolific Denver offense to the point that the Jets had the ball with a chance to tie the score midway through the fourth quarter.
After trimming their deficit to 24-17 with 7 minutes 56 seconds remaining on Geno Smith's 2-yard touchdown pass to Eric Decker, the Jets stopped Ronnie Hillman on a third-and-1 and regained possession at their own 33. Their offense sputtered, though, and after they took over again deep in their territory in the closing seconds, Aqib Talib intercepted a Smith pass and returned it 22 yards for a touchdown to provide the margin of victory.
Returning to the site of one of his greatest failures, last season's Super Bowl, Peyton Manning entered Sunday needing six touchdown passes to eclipse Brett Favre for the most in league history. Given his precision and the Jets' struggling defense, it seemed at least a possibility.
In the end, Manning settled for three scoring throws, on consecutive drives. He completed 22 of 33 passes for 237 yards and became the latest quarterback to shred an overmatched secondary.
During the Jets' losing streak, quarterbacks have thrown 13 touchdown passes and one interception against them while completing 65.1 percent of their passes.
On offense, Smith legitimized Ryan's choice to stick with him after last week's debacle by making better decisions and leading the Jets, a team that had scored three touchdowns in its last 44 possessions, to two scores. He even gave the Jets their first lead since Week 4, a span of 120:48, with a nifty pass to Jace Amaro on a fade in the first quarter.
The Jets played the first 27 minutes about as well as they could have hoped. They did not commit a penalty. They stopped Denver on its first five third downs. They disguised their coverages and sacked Manning twice and countered the hyperbole that emanated all week from Ryan's mouth.
When he was not yearning for 50-mile-per-hour crosswinds or asserting that his Jets could win only if they played their best possible game, Ryan was comparing Manning to the chess master Bobby Fischer. 'I'll try to find a way to knock some of those pieces off, steal them off,' Ryan said. 'But that's what I do.'
Ryan knocked off those pieces by deploying lots of six-defensive-back sets. The Jets dared Denver to run and foiled Manning when he passed. The strategy worked so well that the Jets, even after ceding a 1-yard touchdown catch to Demaryius Thomas, trailed by only 10-7 late in the first half.
All they needed, after punting the ball back to the Broncos, was one more stop - the sort that, in past weeks, had been elusive as a cheetah. In each of their last four losses, the Jets had allowed a demoralizing touchdown drive of at least 80 yards just before or after halftime: 97 yards at Green Bay, 80 against Chicago, 90 against Detroit and 91 at San Diego.
It would be no different on Sunday. Taking over at their 20, the Broncos stampeded 80 yards in 2:32, scoring on a 22-yard pass that Manning feathered to Julius Thomas, just out of the reach of cornerback Darrin Walls.
On the other side of halftime, Denver marched 87 yards, buoyed by the legs of Hillman and Juwan Thompson until Julius Thomas found a seam in the Jets' zone and made a 4-yard touchdown catch.
EXTRA POINTS
Adding injury to insult, the Jets lost guard Brian Winters (knee) and the starting cornerback Dee Milliner, who sustained what appeared to be a serious noncontact injury to his right ankle in the first quarter.
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