If you are a Jets fan you can only hope that Sunday’s
performance by quarterback Sam Darnold is a glimpse into what could be a
special future for a quarterback and a team that is trying to wade its way
through the muck of 2018 with an eye on 2019.
Let’s be honest, the Jets needed this kind of performance.
They needed their rookie quarterback to put his team on his back and carry them
home to a 27-23 victory over a division rival on the road.
When Darnold left after the third play of the game with a
significant limp when he tried to scramble out of trouble on third down, you
couldn’t help but think: “what else could go wrong?”
Because in a season where everything had gone wrong, it
would only be fitting to hear that Darnold re-aggregated the foot injury that
cost him a month, and that his day would be over.
At this point the Jets were already down 7-0, and would
later find themselves down 14-3 thanks in big part to the Jets inability to
slow down quarterback Josh Allen, who gashed the Jets for 101 yards on the
ground and 206 yards through the air.
Then Darnold came back.
It wasn’t exactly Willis Reed saving the Knicks in the ’73
Finals, and it wasn’t as crazy of a game as the week 1 match-up between the
Bears and Packers when Aaron Rodgers suffered a severe knee injury, only to
comeback and lead Green Bay to victory.
No, this was just two really bad teams playing out the
string. And for the better part of three quarters, a lot of things were not
going the Jets way.
There were questionable coaching decisions throughout by
head coach Todd Bowles and offensive coordinator Jeremy Bates. Namely Bowles’s
head-scratching decision to punt the football on fourth and six at the Bills
41-yard line with 3:19 to go in the second quarter instead of going for it. Fortunately for him, the Jets blocked a
Buffalo field goal to close out the first half.
Bowles made the same odd decision to punt, this time on
fourth-and-six near midfield with six minutes to go in the game. The Bills responded by breaking a 20-all tie
with a go-ahead field goal to make it Bills 23, Jets 20 with 2:31 to go in the
game.
There were even turnovers that hurt the Jets chances. A
fumble by Andre Roberts to open the second half that led to a Buffalo field
goal, and an untimely Darnold interception when he had the Jets deep in Bills
territory.
Yeah it was looking like another ugly Jets loss.
But that is what made the victory so impressive. In spite of
everything that went wrong, Sam Darnold found a way.
With 3:08 to go in the third quarter, Darnold engineered an
85-yard drive that ate up six minutes with the quarterback completing his final
five passes of the drive to tie the game.
The touchdown pass itself was a microcosm of the entire
afternoon. Darnold rolled to his right, couldn’t find a receiver, spun around
and started heading back toward his left with Buffalo defenders on his
back. Finally, out of desperation he
flicked the ball with his wrist toward the end zone, and into the hands of
Robby Anderson in tight coverage. Touchdown Jets! Tied game.
Then, on the most important drive of Darnold’s rookie
campaign, he bailed out his embattled head coach when he guided the Jets on a
nine-play, 61-yard drive to win it. It wasn’t flashy. Darnold had only one
spectacular throw on the drive, when he dropped a dime to Anderson down the
sideline for 37-yards. That was enough, as Elijah McGuire squeaked into the end
zone from one-yard out for the winning score.
This game was the reason the Jets traded up to get a
quarterback of Darnold’s caliber. They wanted a guy who could be the difference
maker for the football team. The true sign of a really good quarterback is
someone who makes others around him better.
Guys like Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers, Brett
Favre all made other players look great around them. And they certainly bailed
out their coaches a few times too.
For one Sunday in a lousy season, Sam Darnold reminded Jets
fans of what could be.
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