Getty Image / Mike Stobe
After spending October and November looking as though they were on the verge of ending the longest playoff drought in the National Football League, the New York Jets have come crashing down to Earth in recent weeks.
Having now lost three straight games — which finds them on the outside of the playoffs looking in — the Jets’ most brutal defeat of the season came on Sunday courtesy of a 20-17 loss to the Detroit Lions.
It didn’t have to be this way for the Jets, though, as they not only were leading 17-13 with under two minutes to play, but they also got the ball back with over a minute-and-a-half left on the clock, giving them more than enough time to drive down the field to either tie or win the game. That, unfortunately, is where Robert Saleh came in.
Despite the fact that the Jets got the ball (down just three points, by the way) at their own 25-yard-line with 1:49 left on the clock and with three timeouts in their back pocket. Saleh did not use his first timeout until there was 19 seconds left in the game.
As a result, the Jets wound up kicking a 58-yard-field goal on FIRST DOWN with ONE TIMEOUT LEFT as the clock expired. Greg Zuerlein’s kick missed wide left and the Lions were the ones to leave Metlife Stadium with what could prove to be a playoff-clinching victory.
Speaking to reporters after the game, Saleh tried to rationalize his truly dumbfounding clock management:
“I’ll look back at it,” Saleh said. “With three timeouts, I feel like anything in bounds, obviously, you can be aggressive, just trying to save as many timeouts as I can. I can probably look back at it and say we could’ve used one, for sure, but at the same time, when you have three timeouts, time is not an issue whether you use one there or not. But, yeah, I could always, in hindsight for me, call a timeout to settle the guys down. But, as far as from a time standpoint, you still have plenty of time with three timeouts.”
Despite his vague “in hindsight” mea culpa, Saleh got ripped to shreds by CBS NFL analysts Bill Cowher and Boomer Esiason, who believe that “panic set in” for the second-year head coach.
“Why isn’t Robert Saleh calling timeouts on two different occasions? I would just say there was a lack of awareness there and, I think, panic set in,” Esiason said. “I also would’ve called time out after the completion to Garrett Wilson before that play, too, and you could’ve saved even more time. Those are going to be tough questions for Rob Saleh to be answering at his press conference post-game.”
“A completion with 48 seconds remaining,” Cowher said as CBS rolled the replays. “Call it right here. Instead, Jets run a play with the clock running, and when a long pass falls incomplete, there are [24] seconds remaining. That’s [24] seconds wasted,” Cowher concurred.
To close out the 2022 season, the New York Jets will face off against the Jacksonville Jaguars, Seattle Seahawks, and Miami Dolphins. If they’re going to have any shot of making the playoffs, they’ll likely have to win all three of those games.