Playoff run? Jets need to go back to being a running team
Zonovan Knight #27 of the Jets runs the ball in the second half against the Detroit Lions at MetLife Stadium on Sunday, Dec. 18, 2022. Credit: Jim McIsaac
Mike White gets a lot of the attention because he’s the quarterback and . . . well, does there really need to be another reason?
This is a league that revolves around those 32 men who on any given weekend control the huddles, receive the snaps and throw the passes. They often are the faces of their franchises, the human barometers of team success. If your quarterback is playing well, chances are you are having a good time of it. If he’s not, you get what the Jets experienced in their last outing against the Jaguars.
Having White back on the field after his rib injury sidelined him for two games certainly gives the Jets a better chance at winning on Sunday and at hitting the crease that has opened for them to make the playoffs.
To finish strong and put a dent in the postseason, though, it won’t be White who’s responsible. For that to happen, the Jets need to return to the team they are at their core and recapture their ethos.
They need to go back to being a running team.
In the past few weeks, that identity has withered. Individual players certainly haven’t been able to perform on a down-to-down basis. The offensive coaches have tried to get a little cute in order to protect vulnerabilities when Zach Wilson has been on the field. Opposing defenses have been crowding the line of scrimmage, daring the anemic passing game to try to beat them.
With two regular-season games remaining, the Jets’ path forward is on the ground, their aerial nickname be damned.
“I keep preaching to the guys: We have to run the ball,” offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur said. “There was a point in the season where we were a running team and we were doing a lot of good things in the run game, and that’s kind of fallen off in the last month. You can see when you’re not running the ball what can happen. It hasn’t been good, and it starts with me. But we plan on getting that fixed.”
This certainly would be a good week to do so. The Seahawks’ run defense is the second-worst in the league, allowing 145.8 yards per game. They gave up 283 to the Raiders in Week 12, and in the five games beginning with that one, they have allowed 184.8 per contest.
“I definitely think there are some opportunities there,” running back Zonovan Knight told Newsday. “That’s what the coaches have been stressing. We just have to figure out some of the miscues we’ve been having, find ways to execute and be more of a threat in the run game.”
Knight and Michael Carter are the two main ballcarriers, so it is no surprise that they think the Jets should try to run their way into the postseason. But they also happen to be correct.
Despite the systemic failures, both put the blame on themselves for the recent lack of production.
“To me, it always starts with the running backs,” Carter said. “We get the ball, we have the ability to make things that go wrong right. We’re erasers in that way.”
Said Knight: “We want to be able to execute and dominate in the run game like we did before, and that will create more opportunities in the pass game . . . We plan on turning that around. We still have two games guaranteed left, so we’ll flip it back around to how it was.”
If the Jets can fight their way into the postseason, their rushing attack will become even more important to their success.
“In the playoffs, if you can run the ball, it makes it a hell of a lot easier to win,” Carter said. “You might have to go play in Buffalo and it might be snowing, and if you can’t run the ball, you can’t win a game like that. It’s all about clock management, too. If you can run the ball, you can control the clock pretty much. It makes it a little bit easier.”
The narrative of this season will be about the quarterback. In the coming weeks, we’ll read (and admittedly some of us will write) all about how White led the Jets to this or White cost the Jets that. We’ll reflect on this season at some point and wonder what might have been had changes at the most telling position in sports been made sooner, had quarterbacks remained healthy.
Then we’ll head into the offseason with a shopping list for who we want to lead the Jets in 2023 that will include everything from the far-fetched (an if-you-can’t-beat-him-buy-him money dump in Tom Brady’s lap?) to the risky (might an injury-prone Jimmy Garoppolo be the fit?) to dumpster-diving through other teams’ trash (does Derek Carr have anything to offer?). It will be unavoidable.
But the success or failures of the next month and a half will come down to whether the Jets can return to who they truly are in their offensive souls.
They were designed to be a running team.
Recapturing that essence is more important than any other aspect of their game . . . even if it isn’t the one everyone will be talking about.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
