The New York Jets lost a heartbreaker in their home opener, blowing a 17-7 fourth-quarter lead on their way to a 20-17 overtime loss to the Green Bay Packers.

It was a game that New York played well enough to win, outgaining the Packers by 86 total yards and winning the turnover battle 1-0.

When you see that type of disparity in execution but come up short on the scoreboard, fingers are often pointed at the coaching staff.

Head coach Aaron Glenn and offensive coordinator Frank Reich have been singled out as the primary culprits for this loss, and deservedly so. Jets X-Factor’s Connor Long perfectly laid out why Glenn and Reich deserve flak for causing the Jets to squander this game despite out-playing Green Bay for much of the day.

However, at the end of the day, when a game is close enough to be decided by an overtime field goal, there will certainly be a plethora of hidden margins where the team could have performed better to avoid having the game come down to the head coach’s clock management in the first place.

Most Jets fans are probably overlooking the single most disappointing aspect of the Jets’ performance in this game from a player-execution standpoint:

Skill-position blocking.

Yep, we’re opening the Monday following a crushing Jets loss talking about skill-position blocking. If that isn’t quite melodramatic enough for you, tune your station to WFAN.

How the Jets’ skill-position blocking cost them a game

To understand why skill-position blocking deserves the spotlight on this Misery Monday for Jets fans, we need to perform the process of elimination.

Despite the loss, the Jets performed well in many facets on Sunday.

Defensively, they were phenomenal across the board. Green Bay finished with just 199 yards of total offense despite having overtime to tack more yards on. The Packers went 1 for 9 on third down, lost a fumble, and punted six times. They were also extremely lucky not to have more turnovers, as they fumbled five times, but the Jets only came up with one.

So, the defense wasn’t the problem, even if there were some critical moments where they came up short late in the game. Overall, they were fantastic.

Offensively, the Jets had a decent game through the air. It wasn’t nearly as good as Week 1, but given the conditions, it was acceptable, especially compared to Green Bay’s passing game. Geno Smith generated 0.072 adjusted EPA (Expected Points Added) per dropback, ranking 20th among quarterbacks in Week 2 so far.

Between the four main facets of offense and defense, the only area where the Jets were clearly having an extremely rough time was the rushing offense—which was supposed to be their most reliable strength in a grimy, rainy game.

New York’s run game was nowhere close to as effective as it was in the season opener. The Jets finished with 67 rushing yards on 27 carries, a paltry 2.5 yards per attempt, and that actually oversells the performance of the bread-and-butter run game. The running back duo of Breece Hall and Braelon Allen combined for 36 yards on 21 carries, a grotesque 1.7 yards per carry.

Throughout the afternoon, the Jets saw many drives stall because of poor rushing efficiency. They either failed to convert in critical short-yardage situations or were stuffed on the early downs, putting pressure on Geno Smith to convert more third-and-longs than they would have liked in the rainy conditions. Smith overcame those scenarios at a fairly respectable rate, putting the Jets in a position to win.

But if the Jets’ run game were even adequate throughout the first 59 minutes of this game, they very likely would have sealed the victory at some point before Aaron Glenn’s end-of-regulation clock management came into focus.

Beyond high-leverage coaching decisions, the Jets’ abysmal rushing attack is the main culprit for this loss when looking at the game in totality. And if we dig even deeper, it is the skill-position blocking that deserves blame for the terrible rushing performance.

According to Pro Football Focus’ grading system, the Jets’ offensive line run-blocked quite well in this contest. Cumulatively, New York’s offensive linemen combined for a run-blocking grade of 67.0, ranking fifth-best among 30 offensive line units in Week 2.

The skill position players hung the offensive linemen out to dry.

New York’s non-offensive linemen combined for a run-blocking grade of 50.9, placing 29th out of 30 teams in Week 2, only barely ahead of the Cleveland Browns (50.5).

Many skill position players coughed up run stuffs throughout the game, including Kenyon Sadiq, Adonai Mitchell, Isaiah Williams, and Jelani Woods. Williams also had an offensive holding penalty on a drive that resulted in a punt.

But if there’s one play that sums up the issues New York had in this phase throughout the afternoon, it’s their final offensive play of regulation.

Facing a fourth-and-1 at midfield with 1:20 remaining and the score tied, New York ran Braelon Allen up the middle out of shotgun. The play call itself is certainly questionable, but Frank Reich is counting on the team’s $10 million blocking tight end, Jeremy Ruckert, to seal off the backside edge. Instead, Ruckert is way late off the ball and gets beat inside by Lukas Van Ness, who makes the stop.

All Ruckert had to do here is get out of his stance on-time and put himself in between Van Ness and the ball; he wasn’t asked to pancake him. It should be an easy assignment.

Ruckert is on the team to block. Simple as that. If he does his (very simple) job here, the Jets convert, and they have a high likelihood of winning the game.

Point fingers at coaches all you want, as they are the easiest targets. Sometimes, though, football teams lose because their football players don’t do what they’re paid to do, even if the job in question is something too under-the-radar to be discussed by raging fans on WFAN (or the modern-day WFAN, Twitter Spaces… well, X Spaces, I suppose).

There is so much more to football than the head coach’s clock management and the quarterback’s accuracy. Football fans often forget that. Sometimes, discussions around this sport turn into a soap opera, when it should really be a meticulous analysis of the hundreds of little things that contribute to the outcome.

Crazy as you may sound if you bring it up at the water cooler today, the Jets lost to the Packers because of skill-position blocking.