Accountability continues to be a significant problem for the spiraling New York Jets.
Jets cornerback Sauce Gardner took to X on Sunday to absolve himself from blame for the Jets’ pitiful 31-6 loss in Arizona. Responding to a tweet from ESPN’s Rich Cimini that criticized Gardner for having the team’s “costliest” missed tackle, Gardner replied, “Yup I’m 100% sure me missing that tackle at the beginning of the 2nd quarter for a gain of 17 yards was the costliest miss and that is in fact what lost us the game.”
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Gardner quickly deleted the post (original link here), but it was already captured by fans.
Cimini was referring to this missed tackle by Gardner on Cardinals tight end Trey McBride. It continues Gardner’s trend for missing tackles at an egregiously high rate in 2024.
Despite Gardner’s attempt to minimize the importance of the mistake, it truly was a pivotal moment of the game. If Gardner made the tackle, the Jets likely would have forced a punt and gotten the ball back early in the second quarter trailing by only a touchdown. Instead, the drive continued, and Arizona eventually scored a touchdown to go up by 15 points. It was the third of five consecutive Cardinals scoring drives to start the game, extending into the first drive of the second half.
The deleted tweet marks the latest troubling quote from the two-time first-team All-Pro in a long line of them. Ahead of this week’s game, Gardner tried to defend his poor tackling in 2024 by claiming “people don’t understand … I’ve made more tackling attempts this year.”
This is false and a poor attempt to excuse his tackling woes. Gardner is averaging a career-low 3.8 tackles-plus-missed tackles (“tackling attempts”) per game, showing that teams are not making Gardner tackle more frequently, as he so claimed. Gardner just flat-out is not tackling as effectively as he used to. He has a missed tackle rate of 23.7% in 2024, more than double his 11.6% rate over his first two seasons.
Gardner is a gifted player. You don’t earn first-team All-Pro honors in each of your first two NFL seasons without being an extraordinary athlete. And from a coverage perspective, he has continued to play mostly well this season, blanketing his assignments and forcing targets to other players. It would be an overreaction to start claiming Gardner is no longer a cornerstone building block for the Jets.
However, Gardner’s lack of accountability with his tackling is an encapsulation of the Jets’ team-wide mentality this season. New York’s best players and veteran leaders have often been unwilling to look themselves in the mirror, choosing to deflect blame rather than embrace it for the good of the team. It’s troubling to continue hearing these types of quotes from Gardner and the Jets’ other team leaders, as they are responsible for setting the mentality of the whole roster.
With the Jets’ main locker-room leaders having a defensive, self-centered mindset, it’s no surprise that the entire team continuously looks complacent and lethargic. Gardner must take it upon himself to set a better example for the rest of the team going forward. He can be better than this, both on the field. Everybody knows it, and it’s time that he owns up to it, too.
