The Top 12 Games of 2021: II

Jaguars at Jets, Week 16: Blueprint For “Check Back Next Year” Games On Crack

If you want to be chased after by incensed mobs of North Florida and NYC hoi polloi with pitchforks, torches and other gruesome-looking cutlery, build a time machine, travel back to April 2021, and tell Jaguars and Jets fans what their quarterbacks’ rookie seasons would be like. Your life expectancy in hours would shorten to the average of these passers’ YPA.

“Berrios is no joke.” “Berrios having a great year.” “Braxton Berrios is such a weapon.” So reads a lengthy litany of breathless YouTube comments underneath the NFL-published highlight reel of this game, which saw two teams who had been unequivocally pummeled into the unforgiving dust for 15 straight weeks empty out the playbooks and reach shoulder-deep into their respective bags of tricks to try and give their excitement-impoverished fans some semblance of entertainment before a long winter’s nap. They tried, and mostly failed.

I say mostly failed, but, but, but. A point needs to be raised here. Could you have called this a good game? I think, after rewatching this game, that yes, one could come away from this game and call it good. This game was something of a back and forth affair, with four lead changes in the first 18 minutes (albeit rather lackluster ones: Jags 3-0, Jets 6-3, Jags 9-3, Jets 13-9) and some truly wild plays that gave me pause when I rewatched this alarmingly bizarre game. This was the one that included that crazy Zach Wilson scramble for a touchdown and some truly one-in-a-million-odds offensive line hijinks. If you like that sort of thing, and also like seeing young quarterbacks flash snippets of willful potential against two bottom five defenses, and also like seeing two teams who are more or less riding out the string and hoping that their coaching staffs can do better by their players in 2022, and also also like seeing botched fake field goals and unsuccessful 2-point conversions, then yes – this was a good game. I don’t want to be overly hyperbolic in my condemnation of this game, though, even if it does appear in the second slot on this list; I genuinely believe that fans of Gang Green and #DUUUVAL were ensorcelled by this game because of the progress their rookie signal callers showed. My personal rationale for placing this game so high – aside from, I admit, just assuming that this game was as bad as I remembered because of the two teams involved – was more a “lifetime achievement award” conferred on these sorry squadrons for the preceding fifteen weeks, which were by any measure you employ some of the most miserable and disappointing of the last 25 years, with the Jaguars’ zero-dimensional offense and the Jets’ plexiglass defense inspiring nothing but contempt from us at Personal Vowels and nothing but derision from their opponents. So, there’s the caveat. If you didn’t know which teams were playing, you may be tempted to say this was an alright contest. We live in the real world, though, and we can clearly read the needlessly identificational “NEW YORK” emblazoned on the front of the Jets’ jerseys and descry the unmistakably fungal teal-and-mustard color scheme of the Jaguars from our living rooms as soon as we turn on the television. And that counts against them. It should also be said that this game was the second in two years played in Week 16 that saw a head coach inactivated due to COVID-19, with Robert Saleh sidelined for the contest and Jets tight ends coach Ron Middleton assuming temporary managership of the team. Is it concerning that the arguably strongest showing by the Jets offense came on a day when their defensively-minded head coach was not on call? It’s not ultra-encouraging, that’s for sure. But at least we got a lot of cutaways to Middleton during the broadcast, who appeared to be auditioning for the role of an aging Morpheus in The Matrix Resurrections. The movie premiered 4 days before this game, but whatever.

The names of people who scored touchdowns in this game is mirabile dictu: Zach Wilson, Will Richardson Jr., Braxton Berrios, Connor McDermott, and Dare Ogunbowale. Touchdowns by a quarterback, an offensive tackle, a kick returner, another offensive tackle, and a backup running back. And they were scored on a quarterback scramble, a QB sneak fumble recovery, a kickoff return, a tackle-eligible goalline pass, and a halfback dive. Was this the worst Fantasy Football game of all time? It may have been, but if you were expecting a league-winning performance from anyone on either of these teams, we would question your fantasy sanity. Of course, if you were playing in a sixty-person league, maybe you were forced to start Will Richardson, Jr. and Connor McDermott, in which case you looked pretty smart. But even with this stroke of prescient fantasy captainship, you may have been up against a fantasy football prophet of commensurate foretelling power who started Wilson, Berrios (179 total yards and 5 catches) and Dare Ogunbowale (72 total yards and the rushing touchdown), in which case you probably lost a nail biter. The quarterbacks were the stars of this game: Zach Wilson, with his #2 jersey, quicksilver footwork, superior footspeed and fast-ish release looked like Johnny Manziel. He only threw for 102 yards, but he didn’t fumble or throw an interception and added 91 yards on four rushes. See, that’s the guy the Jets drafted – does he really need every defense to be as shoddily coordinated and checked out as the Jaguars living in the fallout of the Urban Meyer era to look like a generational prospect? On the other side, Trevor Lawrence had one of his finest days as a young pro, throwing 39 passes without a pick and racking up 280 yards through the air, adding another 37 on the ground to bring his afternoon to 300+ yards (a rare feat for him in his stormy rookie voyage). But he also took two absolutely backbreaking takedowns in the pocket – one a sack for 28 yards (yes, 28 yards, just two yards short of the record set by…Patrick Mahomes) and another a near-sack on a very late 2-point conversion attempt that forced him to arc the ball into the endzone like a point blank Hail Mary, which fell incomplete. I’ve said it many times before: 2-yard Hail Marys are largely unsound when your personnel includes Chris Manhertz, Jacob Hollister, Laquon Treadwell and Laviska Shenault out of a bunch formation. There were still five and a half minutes left after those lackluster pass-catchers left the field, though, and the reanimated remains of what used to be the Sacksonville defense managed to hold the New York offense to just a field goal, even nearly intercepting a wretchedly ill-advised Wilson throwaway that might have led to a game-winning defensive score which would have ultimately lost them the first overall pick. Rather than this, basically the best possible thing (draft-wise) happened. JAX got the ball back and Lawrence went off, going 6 of 8 passing and adding a heroic 26 yard scramble that conjured images of his CFP victory against Ohio State to set up first and goal at the 5. Lawrence missed his first pass, then nearly threw a game-ending pick 6 of his own which was dropped by C.J. Moseley and dumbly caught by Marvin Jones (they had to spike the ball). Then on fourth and goal, they had an illegal shift penalty. Game over. These teams have a much longer way to go than this game construed. Maybe 2022 will be kinder to these wayward woebegones.

Everyone knows that you can’t put a linebacker on Conor McDermott.