The NFL is build for days when, for some lucky and equally unlucky teams, logic dissolves, game plans burst into flames and the unexpected happens every other snap.
First-year head coach Aaron Glenn somehow knew that this particular Sunday in Cincinnati for this particular weekly edition of his winless Jets team was that day, if only his Green & White could seize it.
"This game was very, very exciting," Glenn said in his calm, collected HC voice following the Jets' kooky, krazy 39-38 comeback win over the Bengals — and former Jets QB Joe Flacco — for their first win of the season, AG's first win as an NFL head coach, and a win that entered a few lines in the Jets' record book.
"I told my guys at halftime, these are the games where I really can tell the mental and physical toughness of our team, the grit we've been talking about having to play with to win these games. I'm proud of the way we fought. It's one win. I hate the fact that we're 1-7. But I'm happy we got us a win today."
"I'm happy for him, for real," WR Tyler Johnson one of the contributors to the win with a TD catch. "I'm loving at what he's doing here with this organization, and just the way that he's allowing us to want to be here. He's a great, great guy.:
Glenn made it sound like a garden-variety NFL come-from-behind W. But it was more of a great, great comeback than that.
His quarterback, Justin Fields, was coming off of two difficult offensive outings without generating a touchdown.
If Fields struggled again, Glenn had no experienced backup with Tyrod Taylor being deactivated due to his sore knee.
Two of AG's top receivers, Garrett Wilson (inactive) and Josh Reynolds (IR), were unavailable.
And his defense, which definitely played better in the last two of the seven previous losses, was up against Flacco, perhaps the top WR tandem in the league in Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins, a hot RB in Chase Brown, and a Bengals outfit well-rested after its own stunning Thursday home comeback win over Pittsburgh.
Did we forget any reasons the Jets could have gotten their doors blown off in this game?
Perhaps the overarching theme for the day, Glenn said, was Football 101.
"You've heard me say before that to learn how to consistently win, you have to learn how not to lose," he said. "There were a number of things we did today that didn't put us in position to lose this game and put us in position to win this game. ... We had a number of guys who made plays at crucial times. Now it's our time to consistently do that,"
At the start, and at times during the first three quarters, the Jets seemed about to absorb another lesson via loss. Flacco was finding Chase (12 catches, 91 yards) regularly, and he hit Higgins just once — for a 44-yard scoring strike that opened a 17-3 early in the second quarter.
Fields, appearing to throw with more grit and decisiveness than in recent outings, had a solid first half, generating the offense's first touchdown in three games and their first first-half TD since the opener against Pittsburgh when he dropped a blitz-beating moon ball into Tyler Johnson's hands in the end zone to cut that lead to 17-10. Then Fields directed a two-minute drill (actually 1:15) to Nick Folk's second of three field goals at 0:00. But that cut the Jets' deficit at half to 24-13.
It felt a little like one step forward, two back. Little did we know..
Besides Fields' together game — which included seven scores in eight drives before his final kneeldown — Glenn knew the Jets could get back into this one because of their Breece Hall/ Isaiah Davis/Fields ground game.
"We knew we wanted to run the ball quite a bit against this team, and we continued to do that," Glenn said, adding of OC Tanner Engstrand, "One thing Tanner didn't get away from was running it. We knew our two guys would be able to make some yards, the offensive line was really feeling it coming off the ball, being physical, putting themselves in dominant positions,"
Some yards? Well, they had 73 on 18 carries in the first half, not a bad 30 minutes of work although the longest run was an Isaiah Williams 25-yard end-around. But in the second half, the Jets' green line parted the Bengals' striped wall early and often: 19 carries for 181 yards, including a career-long 50-yard dash by Davis and Hall's 35-yarder and 27-yard tightrope-walk TD. That came with 7:52 to play and finally got the Jets as close as they had been since the first quarter, down by 38-32.
But Hall has many talents. In this game he ran it (18 carries, 133 yards, 2 TDs) and caught it (2 receptions, 14 yards), And oh yeah, he threw and completed his first pass — and a go-ahead TD pass at that — since ... high school? His 4-yard halfback-option wobbler found TE Mason Taylor in the end zone for his first pro TD. And so with Hall's third TD of the final frame (two runs and a pass) and Folk's extra point, suddenly the Jets, down by 15 with 15 minutes to go, had the second-largest fourth-quarter comeback in franchise history, if they could hold it.
"That's a call we've been practicing quite a bit," Glenn said, adding during an injury timeout, he asked Fields if the QB felt the option pass would work from first-and-goal at the 4 with 2:00 left. "He was like, '[Spit], Coach it better work.' Those guys were in tune."
The Jets defense still had to weather six more plays from the 1:48 mark from Flacco and his offense. But after a first down, Cincinnati gained 1 yard on its last four plays, with Jarvis Brownlee making the fourth-down PD to prevent a Bengals comeback story that would have been very satisfying to the denizens of the Jungle. Instead, it was the Jets' turn to write the improbable final chapter of a game for the first time this season.
"These guys, this staff, this team get criticized for so much," Glenn said, "And I understand why. We were 0-7 and we brought a lot on ourselves. But a lot of it I feel was unwarranted. But it is what it is.
"I'm just so happy for these guys and our coaches. We still have a long way to go. I'm going to enjoy this win, I really am, with those guys and my family, nobody else. Those are the guys that deserve to have this, and we're going to get out of here, go home and enjoy this bye week, and get ready for Cleveland."
