With Breece Hall likely to miss his third straight game, Braelon Allen is poised to lead the Jets’ backfield once again.
Allen has taken the reins of the Jets’ run game over a two-game span with Hall on the sidelines. From Weeks 4-5, he played 88% of the Jets’ offensive snaps, and among the team’s running backs, Allen was responsible for 95% of the rush attempts and 75% of the targets.
After a ho-hum performance in Chicago, Allen had his NFL breakout game in Week 5 against the Cleveland Browns, rushing for a career-best 116 yards on 24 carries as he led the Jets to a fourth-quarter comeback victory.
In Week 6, the Jets will need more of the same from Allen against the New England Patriots, as this particular matchup demands it.
The Jets need another outstanding game from Braelon Allen
Similar to the Bill Belichick-led Patriots teams of yesteryear, this iteration of the New England defense prides itself on the fundamentals.
The Patriots rank fourth-best in points per game allowed (18.8), and it isn’t because of a flair for the dramatic. New England is merely average in that regard, ranking 15th in sack rate (6.4%) and 17th in takeaways per game (1.2).
Rather, the Patriots are up there because they don’t beat themselves, a classic hallmark of New England football.
According to Pro Football Focus, the Patriots’ defense has missed just 5.6 tackles per game this season, the second-fewest in the NFL behind only the Kansas City Chiefs (4.5).
To put that into perspective, the Patriots are missing about 1.4 tackles per quarter and one out of every 9.7 tackle attempts.
Simply put, New England’s defense is that one house on Halloween that hands out dental floss instead of free candy. They make the opposing offense earn every yard.
That’s why the Jets desperately need more of what Braelon Allen provided last Sunday.
Allen’s breakout against the Browns wasn’t just special because of the gaudy yardage total and the go-ahead touchdown. It was particularly impressive because Allen generated most of the production himself.
According to PFF, Allen forced eight missed tackles, tied for the fourth-most in a single game by a running back this season (Kenneth Walker III is responsible for each of the top three games). That helped him rack up an absurd 108 yards after contact, leading him to 116 rushing yards in a game where only 8 of those yards came before contact.
If Allen merely gained what was blocked up for him against the Browns, the Jets would have lost handily. On a rainy afternoon during which Cleveland held New York’s passing game in check, the Jets’ offense would have gone nowhere, and the Browns would have run away with the game.
Allen’s self-created offense was the saving grace for New York. In New England, they’ll need more of that.
Without self-creation out of the backfield, the Patriots’ defense will force the Jets’ offense to record a plethora of methodical, efficient drives to keep up with their red-hot Drake Maye-led offense. That will be a tall order for a New York offense that hasn’t yet proven it can avoid drive-killing plays, as evidenced by their league-high 16 sacks allowed since Week 2.
The Patriots make you beat them with a thousand paper cuts, simply biding time until you inevitably beat yourself. That formula should work excellently against a Jets offense that has been prone to killing its own drives all year, whether it’s through sacks, botched snaps, questionable play-calls, drops, or untimely penalties.
The Jets have shown they can sustain drives fairly well, as evidenced by their 10th-ranked time-of-possession per drive (2:54). But those drives often don’t amount to what they should, which is shown by their 25th-ranked average of 1.77 points per drive, a hugely disappointing ranking compared to their average possession time.
Therefore, a bend-but-don’t-break defense like New England’s is a nightmarish matchup for the Jets. They can succeed against defenses that are prone to allowing big plays, like the Detroit Lions’ and Tennessee Titans’, but if the opposing defense can take those big plays away and make New York march down the field, the Jets are too prone to eventually beating themselves.
All of this takes us back to Allen. To overcome the Patriots’ defensive approach, the Jets need their offensive weapons to consistently steal more yards than they are handed.
Runs that should go for 2 yards need to go for 10, catches that should be stopped for 10 yards need to go for 20, and so on. The more that Allen and the Jets’ weapons can do that, the fewer plays the Jets will have to run to score points, therefore minimizing the odds of eventually killing their own drives.
Sunday’s matchup features one of the league’s best tackling defenses against a running back coming off one of the most elusive performances of the early season. Suffice to say, that will be a critical matchup in determining whether the Jets can gain the edge they need to pull off a road upset as 7.5-point underdogs.
If Allen comes back down to earth and is consistently brought down at first contact, the Jets might be hard-pressed to score enough touchdowns to compete. But if Allen can negate New England’s core defensive strength by sustaining the improvement he displayed last week, the Jets just might be able to break through.
