Years from now, long after Herman Edwards has retired to golf and relaxation on the Monterey Peninsula, future Jets coaches will review tapes of big games past for this organization and come to this conclusion:
Avoid any use of the halfback option pass.
It hasn’t done the Jets well over the years. Back in 1997, with Bill Parcells in charge of these parts, it cost the Jets a playoff berth in the season finale when Leon Johnson threw an INT on the option late in a loss to the Lions in Detroit.
Yesterday, it indirectly caused the Jets to lose to the Ravens, 20-17 in an overtime that never should have occurred.
The Jets were conducting a house party yesterday, slapping the Ravens and their vaunted defense around Giants Stadium and then they decided to get cute and, at a moment when panic should have been the last thing on the mind of any Jet, Jets’ RB LaMont Jordan panicked.
Big time.
The Jets were leading 14-0 and had possession at the Ravens’ 17-yard line with two minutes remaining in the half. They were poised to go for the jugular, making it at least 17-0 and possibly 21-0 at the intermission.
This is when Jets’ offensive coordinator Paul Hackett, who had his stuff going marvelously to that point, with his backup QB Carter 7-of-7 for 128 yards, dialed up a halfback option pass for Jordan, who rolled right in some traffic, saw no one open and inexplicably flung the ball into the end zone, where there wasn’t a single Jets player. It landed right in the waiting arms of S Ed Reed, the Ravens’ best defensive player.
Reed proceeded to return the ball more than 100 yards into the Jets’ end zone. The TD return, however, was called back because of two key things. Firstly, because Carter, who never gave up, chased him down and secondly, because the Ravens were called for an illegal block on Carter.
The Ravens would score a TD on that drive anyway and suddenly the Ravens, one play away from extinction, were right back in it, trailing 14-7 at the half.
“I take responsibility for (the loss),” an impressively stand-up Jordan said afterward. “I don’t want to hear, ‘Oh, Paul Hackett (called) a bad play.’ Bottom line is this: When we ran the play in practice, I made all the right decisions. Coach Hackett had all the confidence in the world in me. I went to throw the ball away. I didn’t get the job done. I didn’t throw it far enough.”
Jordan said he was trying to throw the ball through the back of the end zone, but, because he was beyond the hash mark toward the sideline, he could (should) have thrown it out of bounds.
“Coach prepared me,” he said. “I knew all the situations.”