Smith learns it’s a grownups’ game
[Sports Beat]
The New York Jets are 1-1 this season and the loss to the New England Patriots showed rookie quarterback Geno Smith’s vulnerabilities: inaccuracy and bad decision-making.
The 13-10 loss to the Patriots was a tough, defensive and low scoring game. Smith threw three interceptions to seal the team’s fate.
The team will need to work harder and avoid give-aways. Truth be told, the Jets’ 18-17 home-opener victory against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was an assisted win.
The Jets were down by two points with 34 seconds to the end of their contest, no time outs left and the ball on their own 20 – the inevitable gloom of an opening loss hung in the air over the Meadowlands.
QB Smith threw an incompletion to tight end Kellen Winslow, and then found him for 25 yards on the next play. The weary fan base at the Meadowlands started to breathe life into the stadium.
Smith responded and proceeded by spiking the ball. The next play, he scrambled for 10 yards and Bucs’ linebacker Lavonte David made a big mistake by shoving Smith.
“I saw him hit him out of bounds,” Jets coach Rex Ryan later said. “It was clear, and the official standing right there made the appropriate call. Then I was like, ‘We’re kicking that field goal.’”
He added: “At that time, I was like ‘Holy cow! We’ve got a shot.’ I’ll say this – the kid showed a great deal of poise. He ran for what he could; he got out of bounds, and the guy hit him out of bounds. It was the right call and we were the benefactors from it. It was the right call.”
The penalty placed the ball at the Bucs 30 and kicker Nick Folk drilled the 48-yard field goal.
But against the New England Patriots, Smith and the New York Jets weren’t as fortunate. His three interceptions denied the team what could have easily been a win for them.
The Jets defense did hold the New England offense to 13 points, 232 total yards and kept the Patriots scoreless in the second half. And on opening day, the Jets defense held the Tampa Bay offense to 250 total yards and three second-half points totaling 17 point.
Coach Ryan is confident. “They’re working their butts off; probably led the NFL in our offseason conditioning and voluntary workouts and all that,” he said.
Now the focus is on the next game — Buffalo.
