With the Jets riding a two-game winning streak and the Patriots at the top of the AFC East standings after stringing together seven straight wins going into Thursday night's game at Gillette Stadium, something would have to give.
And that something was the difficulty of the Jets' defense had getting to QB Drake Maye and then the secondary's trouble handling New England's diverse passing attack in which Maye spread the ball around to five receivers in his team's 27-14 win.
"It was a number of plays where guys were running free and that bothers me. It really does," HC Aaron Glenn said. "We have to clean that up, because you can't let any quarterback have those types of wide open receivers, especially him, because he will find them. So that can't be a part of who we are. It was unacceptable."
In the secondary for the Jets (2-8), CB Brandon Stephens has been the only constant from the start of the season. Rookie Azareye'h Thomas, who took over the starting role a few weeks ago, was injured. Jarvis Brownlee Jr., was back playing slot corner, while special teams ace Qwan'tez Stiggers took three quarters of the defensive snaps at cornerback. At safety, with Andre Cisco out for the season, rookie Malachi Moore teamed with Tony Adams, each playing all 67 snaps, spelled a bit by Isaiah Oliver.
"There is a lot to look at, so we will look at the film and see," Stephens said. "It takes all 11 to shut down the run, so the guys up front did a good job stopping it, especially our linebackers and DBs coming up and making tackles. That was what we needed to do."
The Patriots (9-2) were limited to 65 rushing yards in the game, but RB TreVon Henderson managed to account for 62 of them while also scoring 3 TDs and had his side's longest run of the game -- a 9-yard scoring sprint.
"Obviously we didn't come out with the win," Stephens said. "There's other stuff we should have done better, but we'll take a look at the film. We are just trying to grow each and every day. Just be 1 percent better and finish the week 1-0 with a win and we weren't able to do that. But the ship doesn't stop here. We still have more ball to play and we'll come back to work."
The Jets came into the game knowing the importance of rattling Maye, especially after logging 6 sacks against Cleveland, led by Will McDonald IV's career-high 4 takedowns of Dillion Gabriel. But McDonald, who called Maye "a really good quarterback," was held without a sack against rookie OL Will Campbell.
"It was very obvious that they were worried about Will," Glenn said. "You see he got chipped a number of times, and when he does get the chip, we got to have other guys go out there and make plays. I will say this, too. We were back there a couple times to make it and just missed the plays. That's something we got to do a better job of is finishing. So, I told our guys that. Number of times we should have had the quarterback corralled, should've had him on the ground, and didn't finish the play."
Brownlee (Louisville) played against Maye (North Carolina) in college and faced the Pats' QB in his (4-13) rookie season in New England's game against Tennessee, Brownlee's former team.
"Everything was kind of new to him, he was a rookie," Brownlee said. "From playing him last year to this year, he has gotten way better. Tons better. You can tell he's put the time in and put the work in. ... I've been a fan of his since college, so kudos to him."
Maye, who was sacked once, by Jermaine Johnson, was calm and steady, completing 25-of-34 passes for 281 yards, connecting with WR Stefon Diggs 9 times for 105 yards. The Jets' defense allowed completions of 26, 23, 22 and 20 yards as Maye had the time and field presence to extend plays and find an open man.
"Yeah, he is a nice quarterback," said LB Quincy Williams, who was back in the starting lineup and was one of four Jets defenders with 8 total tackles in the game. "But what the offense does well is, they are a consistent offense. They run their plays and they're not going to do any trick stuff. They are going to tell you all to stop us, so they might run the same plays 10 times. You have to be right 10 times, or that one time you're not right, that's going to be that big play that they make or the big run that they had."
