During Monday night's penalty-filled loss at Miami, Garrett Wilson caught 6 passes on 8 targets for 82 yards, and a 23-yard TD pass from Justin Fields (plus an apparent 18-yard scoring toss that was called back for offensive pass interference to close out the third quarter). On the next play, LG John Simpson was flagged for a roughing penalty, and the Jets had to settle for Nick Folk's 50-yard field goal to get to 24-13. It was a sequence emblematic of the game which saw the Jets penalized 13 times for 101 yards.
"This past week was a 'got to have it' and the fact that we just played how we did, now this becomes an 'absolutely got to have it,' " Wilson said, looking ahead to Sunday's visit by the Dallas Cowboys. "Got to have it. Got to get on the board. It's a home game. Protect our home field and what do you want your legacy to be in this league? I look back on my time and man, we've got to go now. There's no time, you know? We've got to have it this week and I'll make sure to relay [that] and they know that, but I'll make sure to relay that to the team because I'm sure they all feel the same."
Wilson, who signed a contract extension before the start of his fourth season playing for the Green & White, is the acknowledged WR1 on a squad still searching for a consistent WR2. Jets quarterbacks, Fields and Tyrod Taylor in one game, have thrown the ball 107 times so far this season. Wilson has been targeted on 38 passes, and he's hauled in 27 of the team's 72 receptions. The next closest is RB Breece Hall with 13 and rookie TE Mason Taylor with 11 (5 of them on Monday night in his return to his hometown).
"He's very electric when he gets the ball in his hands," Glenn said. "We want to make sure as an offense that we start to script our plays to make sure certain guys get the ball."
Two of Wilson's 3 TD catches have come from Fields, his teammate in college at Ohio State. With time running out against the Dolphins, Wilson outwrestled Rasul Douglas in the end zone for a 23-yard highlight-reel TD pass. Those late-game heroics, however, could not mask Wilson's frustration with the team's miscues (13 penalties) and turnovers (3 fumbles lost).
"You've got to eliminate them," he said. "You don't get over them -- how do you cut them out? Attention to detail, attention to detail, doing something differently during the week, doing something differently on gameday, as players, I'm talking about. Because it's been preached, it's been talked about, it's been emphasized and as I said, it's our job to go out there and execute what we're being asked to do and not make critical errors at critical times. We definitely have to re-evaluate as players what we're doing and why we're not able to do that."
He added: "What do you want your legacy to be in this league? I look back on my time, and, man, we got to go now. There's no time. We got to have it this week."
RB Breece Hall: 'I Really Believe in Coach Glenn'
Breece Hall ran the ball 14 times for 81 yards (sharing the team lead Monday night with QB Justin Fields) and also caught 5 passes for 30 yards against Miami. He had his longest run, 23 yards, so far this season (52 carries for 238 yards overall, 4.2 per attempt).
And like the vast majority of players on the Jets, and throughout the NFL, they have largely experienced winning throughout their lives playing the game. That makes it that much more challenging dealing with the Jets' first 0-4 start since 2020, when Hall was in his second season at Iowa State.
"It used to really mess with me mentally and emotionally because I hate losing," he said. "I don't really come from losing. Being in high school [Wichita Northwest], I went to a powerhouse football [school], and then college you know, building the school up to where we were good and everything, never really experienced too much losing.
"Then coming here, it's been a lot of hardships, a lot of crazy stuff going on, but for me personally, I just enjoy that I'm still here and that I'm still able to be around the guys every day. It's just the fact of I really believe in Coach Glenn and our coaching staff. For me, it's easy to wake up every day and come in and go to work because I've got faith in who we have around here in this building. I just enjoy being around the guys and just trying to enjoy the time I do have here. So that's what it is."
CB Sauce Gardner: 'It's Bigger Than Just Me'
Of the Jets' 13 penalties Monday night, the defense incurred 5, one of which was a pass interference call on Sauce Gardner.
"I'm personally frustrated," Gardner said. "I just feel like -- I don't know if this is wrong to say -- I think I get called for more stuff just based on us not winning. I watch these winning programs and there can be some egregious things and it don't get called, letting the players play … We don't win, we don't get the calls we should get and we get calls we probably shouldn't get called for."
QB Justin Fields, who missed the Week 3 game at Tampa Bay with a concussion, was twice hit out of bounds on separate plays and TE Jeremy Ruckert also took a late hit in the fourth quarter. No penalties were called on any of those plays.
"We just have to lock in as a team," Gardner said. "I keep saying it, I don't want to lose. This is about the craziest I have ever felt about losing."
