There may not have been a better drive that summed up the afternoon for the New York Jets in Week 1 than their final one of the game.
With the contest already out of reach, it looked as though the Jets would finally put up their first touchdown of the game when Joe Flacco found Elijah Moore in the end zone. However, the play was quickly waved off for offensive pass interference and renewed the very real possibility that New York may not score a touchdown in their first game of the new season.
The Jets would eventually get into the end zone, but it was a sign of just how tough of a day Flacco and the offense had in their season-opening loss to the Baltimore Ravens. The starter finished the day going 37 of 59 for 307 yards, while throwing a touchdown and interception.
At one point some fans even chanted for backup Mike White to come into the game and Flacco wasn’t helped by the poor pass protection and dropped catches by his receivers.
“I just think there were some easy things that we left out there early in the game,” Flacco said. “Just didn’t execute well enough in terms of some our game plan stuff that we really thought we’d be able to take advantage of. Maybe early some of that stuff is taken away and we have to just get down to the easy ones a little bit better than we did in terms of my part, and just a thing here and there.”
Part of the issue, according to Flacco, was that they didn’t get enough energy off of some of their earlier plays, and that played a part in the rough day for the offense.
“I felt like we would get around midfield on a couple of drives and we should have had some energy going behind us and we kind of just (were like) ‘oh yeah let’s go. Let’s go up to the ball,'” Flacco said. “Then we would just never turn the corner and got going off of some of those plays that we did have. We had some chunks. I feel like we had some chunks in the first half, literally one play and that was it.”
The Ravens were able to get to Flacco three times during the course of the game and New York players fumbled the ball twice. In the end, it was little errors that added up and kept the defense on the field longer than they would have imagined.
The weather during the course didn’t do the Jets any favors either on Sunday as heavy rain hit the area as the game was getting underway, but head coach Robert Saleh said it was the team’s execution that led to so many dropped passes and missed opportunities.
“It’s impossible to win football games against a veteran team when you move the ball the way you do and you come up empty-handed time and time again,” head coach Robert Saleh said. “You’re not going to beat a veteran team when you’re not capitalizing on momentum that you gain. Or drop passes or being loose with the football, miss kicks.”
