New York Jets In-Game Injuries, Next Man up No Problem

Cowboys fans will not just hope for better results in 2016, and will most certainly want to erase the pathetic 2015 season.

It was hardly easy, but the New York Jets kept themselves firmly in the AFC playoff race by slipping past the Dallas Cowboys 19-16 Saturday night. “I just straightened it out and it felt good”, he said in the postgame locker room. “We didn’t blow the game like we did in Buffalo”. It’s a good time to start playing some good football.

If the Jets are to make the playoffs, they’ll have to win at least one of the next two games for a legitimate shot, unless they win out.

“We’re on our way to becoming one of those types of teams if we can keep it up”.

The game came down to the teams trading field goals in the last two minutes of regulation.

Fitzpatrick appeared to have led the Jets to a go-ahead field goal in the waning seconds of the first half, but Bullock’s 40-yarder was erased by an illegal shift penalty on Leger Douzable.

Evoking some football-ese, Bowles said, “We mis-fit some plays”.

Dan Bailey tied it at 16 on a 50-yard field goal that caromed through off the right upright with 1:55 remaining. “But when we had to have it, at the end there, I thought our guys stepped up”.

The Jets reclaimed the lead by a 16-13 count with 5:07 possession consisting of a 9-play, 70-yard drive with 8:58 left in the game when Ryan Fitzpatrick hit Eric Decker from 3 yards out. NY is 9-5 and in position to be a wild-card team in the AFC.

If the Cowboys can run the game plan the way they did against a very good Jets defense – run the ball a lot, use shorter passes – and give Moore a week of practice as a starter so he is more comfortable with Dez Bryant and Jason Witten, then they could steal a few games to finish the season.

Bowles was referring, in particular, to a 24-yard completion to Quincy Enunwa on the Jets’ first fourth-quarter scoring drive, which gave the Jets a first down at the Dallas 3.

Something special is happening to them even if nobody is quite sure how to explain it. There’s an intangible quality to the Jets – a “mental toughness”, as Todd Bowles puts it – that makes them unsafe this time of year. If they play as sloppy as they did Saturday night over the next couple of weeks, their season will end sooner than later. A pair of incompletions by Cassel forced Dallas to settle for Bailey’s 27-yard field goal. He would miss the 45-yarder on the next play.

-RB Darren McFadden rushed for 100 yards on 16 carries. Aside from the Bilal Powell TD, the first half was pretty uneventful from the Jets’ perspective. Fitzpatrick finished with 299 yards 1 touchdown and 1 interception. They’re learning how to win close games, a necessary trait in December and January. Three plays later, the Jets kicked the game-winning field goal, and later Williams’ interception sealed the victory.

“That’s part of being a specialist”, said Bullock.