A tendency after suffering a pair of agonizing home defeats is to want to tear everything down and start building up again while searching for answers that lead to victories.
NFL coaches battle that desire all the time, after wins and losses. As HC Aaron Glenn said following the Jets' 38-33 loss to Las Vegas at MetLife Stadium about his offense: "There are plays out there, I thought, that we left on the field." Or as G Joe Tippmann put it in more hungrily, "We definitely left some meat on the bone."
But Glenn also offered praise for his offense after the game and he repeated those sentiments at his news conference Monday morning.
"I thought our offense did an outstanding job of moving the ball and creating explosive plays. We scored touchdowns, which was good," Glenn said, before noting that only 2 TDs came on 6 red zone drives, a shortfall that will be stressed again in the meeting rooms and on the practice fields this week before traveling to Kansas City.
One measure of how the Jets have been moving offensively is their yards per offensive play in these last two home games. Against Miami, they averaged 7.11 yards/splay. Against Vegas, that number was 7.20.
Combined, the Jets averaged 7.16 yards/play the past two games. And that is a good number. In fact, it's the seventh-best average in back-to-back games in franchise history, and the best since Games 9-10, at Oakland and at Indianapolis, 23 seasons ago in 2003.
The best averages, no surprise, center around Game 2 in 1972, when Joe Namath, at 10.61 yards/play. outdueled Johnny Unitas in the Jets' 44-34 win at Baltimore. Since that game, here is a more compact list of the Jets' top four back-to-back yards/play averages of the past 50 seasons:
| Season | 1st Gm, Opp | Yds/Play | 2nd Gm, Opp | Yds/Play | B-to-B Yds/Play |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | Gm 9 @ OAK | 7.44 | Gm 10 @ IND | 9.53 | 8.22 |
| 1977 | Gm 5 @ MIA | 6.04 | Gm 6 vs OAK | 8.84 | 7.41 |
| 2026 | Gm 7 vs MIA | 7.11 | Gm 8 vs LV | 7.20 | 7.16 |
| 2004 | Gm 7 vs MIA | 7.61 | Gm 7 @ BUF | 5,.41 | 7.11 |
Their current two-game outburst, totaling 816 yards and 58 points, is built on names and achievements that have become familiar over the past two weeks.
Through the Air ─ QB Geno Smith and OC Frank Reich have helped highlight individual receivers all season, but from game to game, their explosions hadn't been joined by fellow teammates. But one of the hoped-for collaborations, between WRs Garrett Wilson (6 catches, 83 yards) and Adonai Mitchell (7-142-1), erupted for a combined 13 catches and 225 yards.
Smith found Wilson for 31 yards on the game's first offensive play and hit Mitchell for a pair of 20-yarders in the first half, then connected with Mitchell for 47 yards to move the Jets into the red zone for the sixth time for their last score. That long ball gave Smith his eighth completion of 40-plus yards (to five receivers). As referenced last week, that is the best total through eight games in franchise history behind only Namath's 12 in the first eight games of '72.
On the Ground ─ Braelon Allen continued to rip off ground games in 10-yard chunks. He had five more rushes of 10-plus yards Sunday, crowned by his 21-yard TD run around the left side. That gives Allen 18 rushes of 10-plus yards the past four games and 19 in his five-game gig replacing the injured Breece Hall. The 19 double-digit carries are fourth in the NFL through Sunday's games, and his 18 from Weeks 5-8 are the most in the league in that span, with Jahmyr Gibbs second with 15 runs (in Detroit's three games in that four-week span).
Allen summed the bittersweetness of not crowning his career highs of 147 rush yards and 153 scrimmage yards with a W on top.
"Obviously there are positives always, and I love our progress as a team and as an offense," Allen said. "There are takeaways for sure, positive takeaways. But the goal is to win. When you don't do that, it's hard to enjoy."
The Jets' resolve to keep the offense rolling, play complementary football, and finish all the way to victory will be tested Sunday by the Chiefs, who have the third-best yards/play offense (6.30) and the ninth-best defense (5.04) in the NFL.
