Key statistical trends from New York Jets’ loss to San Francisco 49ers

Suffice to say, the New York Jets have an absurd amount of holes to patch up to prevent their ship from sinking before the calendar flips to October. Missed tackles are an enormous problem For the second consecutive week, Gregg Williams' defense has embarrassed itself when trying to finish tackles. According to Pro Football Focus' tracking, the Jets led the NFL in missed tackles last week with 16. This week, they whiffed on 13, tied for second-most. With 44 tackles converted, they posted a chronic miss rate of 22.8%, second-worst of the week behind only Pittsburgh's 22.9%. That's even worse than their Week 1 rate of 21.1% (16 missed / 60 made), which was third-worst of the week. Altogether, through two games, the Jets are tied with the Chiefs for an NFL-worst 29 missed tackles defensively. New York's miss rate of 21.8% barely trails Kansas City's league-worst 22.3%. What is frightening for the Jets is that this issue has been unit-wide. It's not a couple of players that are dragging the numbers down - everybody is sputtering. The Jets have had an NFL-high 15 players credited with at least one missed tackle. However, Blessuan Austin has been the biggest culprit, missing three tackles in each game for a team-leading total of six that is also tied for the NFL lead. With his length, power, and aggressive mindset, Austin's tackles pop off the screen when he converts them, but his head-first, diving tackling technique leads to a ton of whiffs and needs to be cleaned up as soon as possible. Austin is loaded with potential both as a downhill player and in coverage, but if he continues to miss tackles at this rate, all of that upside will be for naught, and another benching from Gregg might be on the way. Marcus Maye also had three missed tackles against the 49ers, a rough downturn after his exciting season opener. Positively, Bradley McDougald and Brian Poole have finished well - McDougald has made 14 tackles without a single miss while Poole has made 13. With the shortened offseason and no preseason, tackling was considered to be an aspect of the game where players around the league might need some time to get back up to speed. That has not seemed to be the case, as the leaguewide miss rate thus far has been 14.5%, basically identical to 2019's 14.8%. The Jets have just been flat-out blowing it in this department, which is surprising considering they fared well with the league's 11th-lowest miss rate last season (14.1%). Adam Gase wasted the offensive line's first down success The Jets offensive line did a great job of creating successful runs on first down to put the Jets ahead of the chains, but on second down, Adam Gase's baffling decision-making put the line's impressive efforts to waste. Against the 49ers, the Jets averaged 4.8 yards per rush attempt on first down (which excludes a Sam Darnold kneel) - very solid. However, instead of building off of that success to take shots downfield in the passing game, Gase ran the ball eight times on second down. Those runs averaged 2.5 yards, with only one of the eight resulting in a first down. When he did go to the pass, Gase conservative and ineffective. On 12 second down passing plays, the Jets picked up only three first downs. Sam Darnold averaged a minuscule 6.0 yards per completion over five completions on second down, which is an unacceptably low number (the league average completion is typically about 11.4 yards) when you have an offensive line that is doing such a good job of drawing the defense toward the line of scrimmage through its first down success. Through two games, the Jets are tied for seventh in the NFL with 4.7 yards per rush attempt on first down (excluding kneeldowns). Yet, Gase has called only two play action passes on second down. Two! Brutal play-calling from Gase. He left countless yards on the field with his overly conservative approach and did not even slightly adjust that philosophy after San Francisco lost two starting pass-rushers early in the game (Nick Bosa and Solomon Thomas). The run defense was extraordinarily boom-or-bust Most of the time, a San Francisco run against the Jets yielded a result that was either unbelievably fantastic or brutal. On the downside, the Jets had three utterly horrendous plays against the run. They ceded an 80-yard touchdown to Raheem Mostert on the first snap of the game, a 16-yard touchdown to Jerick McKinnon, and a 55-yard conversion to McKinnon on a 3rd & 31. Yes, 31. That actually happened. According to Pro-Football-Reference, it is the NFL's first rushing first down with 31-plus yards to go since Leroy Hoard picked up 53 yards on a 3rd & 37 for Minnesota on Halloween of 1999. However, the Jets were not just good outside of those three plays - they were dominant. On the 49ers' other 24 carries, they picked up only 33 yards, an average of 1.4 per attempt. The Jets racked up 10 stops for no gain or a loss, an absurdly high number. What makes it even more impressive is that garbage time hardly helped them get there, as only one of those stops was in the fourth quarter. Quinnen Williams made the tackle on five runs that resulted in a gain of three yards or less, while Jordan Jenkins, Steve McLendon, and Kyle Phillips each had a hand in three such tackles apiece. Tight ends are struggling to get involved Darnold's most efficient targets in 2018 and 2019, respectively, were Chris Herndon and Ryan Griffin. Thus far, neither has made an impact in the passing game. After logging only seven receiving snaps in the Buffalo game, Griffin ran a route on 15 of Darnold's 37 dropbacks against San Francisco while Herndon went out on 22. Griffin was not targeted once. Through two games, he has yet to see an official target over 22 receiving snaps, although he did grab a 27-yard catch against San Francisco that was called back due to a push-off on Griffin for offensive pass interference. Herndon has been highly disappointing to begin his belated follow-up to a promising 2018 rookie season. He has seen 11 passes thrown his way, snagging seven, but those catches have gone for only 42 yards (6.0 per reception / 3.8 per target). Only two were first downs (18.2% of targets) and both of those were in garbage time of the Buffalo game. If you take out his production on the garbage time drive against the Bills (3 catches on 3 targets for 35 yards and two firsts), Herndon has caught only 4-of-8 targets for 7 yards and no first downs. In addition, Herndon lost a fumble and allowed a sack in pass protection against Buffalo, and against San Francisco, he dropped a would-be touchdown off of a fantastic scrambling pass from Darnold. Herndon did do a good job of separating on the scramble drill to give Darnold a target on the play, showing a flash of that improvisational camaraderie the duo showcased in 2018, but he let the pass fly straight through his hands. On the plus side, Herndon drew a 20-yard pass interference call against San Francisco, but that's about all he brought to the table in a game where he finished with one catch for five yards over four targets. Gase needs to make it a priority to feature these two Darnold favorites as the team battles a myriad of injuries at wide receiver. Meanwhile, Herndon and Griffin need to hold up their end of the bargain and actually do enough to warrant a boost to their target shares. Both need to be sharper route-runners and get open more consistently. Herndon needs to be sure-handed enough to earn Darnold's confidence back, and he can also stand to create more yardage after the catch. Advanced metrics are high on Sam Darnold's performance Darnold's box score numbers were unimpressive (21-for-32, 179 yards, 1 touchdown, 0 interceptions, 5.6 yards per attempt, 90.5 passer rating), but the advanced metrics out there thought his performance against San Francisco was underrated by the general statistics. ESPN scored Darnold with a raw Total Quarterback Rating (unadjusted for opponent quality - this early in the season, opponent quality adjustments are very noisy) of 78.9, 13th-best of the 32 starting quarterbacks in Week 2. Pro Football Focus scored Darnold with an overall grade of 86.2, which ranked seventh-best out of 32. Later this week, I'll break down my 0-to-100 grade of Darnold's performance against the 49ers. I'm looking to forward to giving it another watch on the All-22 film - he made some very impressive throws and did not commit many major mistakes, but was a bit conservative and rattled in the face of pressure. Was this a great game? Just a good one? An average one? The tape tells all. What I do know is that he will certainly earn a much higher score than the one I gave him for his game against Buffalo in Week 1. Darnold has a long way to go towards putting together a legitimate Year 3 breakout that proves he can be unquestionably counted on as a franchise quarterback, but his performance against the 49ers was a step in the right direction after an alarming season debut in Buffalo.