An inside look at the Jets-Texans Week 9 “Thursday Night Football” matchup at MetLife Stadium:
Jets QB Aaron Rodgers vs. the Texans front seven
Patriots defensive tackle Davon Godchaux said after last week’s game that Rodgers did not look like himself and was immobile. Rodgers agreed with him and admitted he had trouble running in New England thanks to knee and hamstring injuries. But Rodgers said he felt better Monday morning and he said he feels healthier entering this game than he has in weeks.
He better. The Texans have a strong pass rush, led by Will Anderson (7.5 sacks) and Danielle Hunter (5.5 sacks). Those two are going to get after Rodgers if he can’t extend plays and escape the pocket.
“I’m going to have to move around a little bit,” Rodgers said. “Will and Danielle are great pass rushers and not the only ones who get a good push in the middle. They can bring five-man pressures, six-man pressure, all-out pressure, so I got to be able to move a little bit, and I’m not the runner I once was. I led our team in rushing a handful of games over the years. I don’t want to do that, but I got to be able to move around. I mean obviously Week 3 [against the Patriots] I moved around pretty damn well and had some success, so I need to be able to get off the spot.”
It feels like the Jets invent new ways to lose each week. They have to put together a win at some point … right? I think it comes Thursday night against a flawed Texans team that will be hurting at wide receiver without Nico Collins and Stefon Diggs.
Aaron Rodgers and the Jets put together a complete game on offense and stop the losing streak.
Jets 27, Texans 24
Slow play: The Jets have been trying to figure out ways to speed up their pre-snap process on offense this week after being forced to burn three timeouts in the first quarter last week and taking a delay of game penalty on a two-point conversion try.
It would not be surprising to see the Jets use some no-huddle in order to speed up the tempo. Aaron Rodgers likes to use most of the play clock to study the defense and that is not changing but the Jets have to find ways to get the plays called quicker and get lined up.
“It falls on me at the end,” Rodgers said. “I got to make sure that we’re not having those. I mean, listen, there were a lot of things that went into that, but we got to get lined up, we got to get the call right, but in the end, I got to get the ball snapped if I can. There’s going to be timeouts from time to time, but we just got to get lined up and then I got to make sure we get out of the huddle quicker.”
Whoa Joe: The Jets have struggled to stop the run this year. They better fix that fast.
Texans running back Joe Mixon is having a monster season. He has 503 rushing yards and five touchdowns in five games.
He has gone over 100 yards rushing in four of his five games and had 159 yards last week against the Colts.
The Jets are 17th in rushing yards allowed, giving up an average of 125.6 yards per game.
The Jets were better against the run last week versus the Patriots, with 57 of the 112 rushing yards they allowed coming from quarterback scrambles.
Reddick redux: It was a quiet debut for edge rusher Haason Reddick last week against the Patriots.
He played 26 snaps and had two pressures in his first game since ending his silly holdout.
Can he have a bigger role this week, even though the Jets only had three days to prepare? “We’ll see, a lot of it’s kind of predicated by the game,” interim coach Jeff Ulbrich said. “This game was obviously tight, and we probably had the last passing situations that he might have otherwise, you know, that’s kind of where we’re starting him off, is the passing situations, whether it’s second and long, third down, whatever the case may be. And then as he learns that he’s going to get integrated more and more and more, so, we’ll see.”
Stream the game live on Thursday night on Amazon Prime Video
Kicking it around: The Jets will have a new kicker on Thursday night after Greg Zuerlein bombed again Sunday in New England.
Zuerlein has missed six field goals this season and the Jets put him on injured reserve Wednesday. He has a left knee injury that just popped up on the injury report on Tuesday.
The Jets signed two kickers to the practice squad on Wednesday — Riley Patterson and Spencer Shrader — and one will be elevated to kick for the Jets on Wednesday.
Zuerlein’s struggles have been one of the biggest issues for the Jets and now they’ll get to see if a new kicker can solve that issue.