While Ryan Fitzpatrick was far from perfect against the Steelers, he wasn’t the only one to falter this past Sunday. There were a few occasions where the Jets let down their quarterback. Let’s see which of the receivers had bonehead plays.
The defense comes out in a two deep safety look on this third and nine play in the first quarter. The pre-snap read indicates that a crossing route should be successful because the defender playing on Marshall is well back of the line, and Fitzpatrick locks into Marshall from the start. Brandon Marshall runs across the field to get open and Fitzpatrick makes a very good pass that is simply dropped. There is no other excuse for this pass, which has to be caught for the first down. The only bad aspect of this play is Fitzpatrick locking into Marshall, but the pre-snap read does indicate that it was the right read from the start.
This a doomed third down and one play for the Jets, which gets stopped. It’s not the best of calls on a short down play, but the failure here is on the part of Brent Qvale, who flat out runs by a defender that he should have blocked. Qvale is of course filling in for Brian Winters, but this is just a terrible job at blocking. This may not be a big gain for Forte even with the block, but he stood a much better chance of converting the first down if the pulling guard had actually blocked the person directly in the backfield. This is a play that works with a mobile QB as a read option pass, but fails because the initial defender doesn’t bite on the QB running on this play at all. It’s a horrible sell by Fitzpatrick because he has to draw the free defender further up the field before passing this ball. A running QB runs parallel to the line here causing the free defender to pick the QB, opening up the lane for Forte. However, the biggest failure on this play is Brent Qvale, causing this play to be stopped in the backfield.
Brandon Marshall makes his second appearance on this list with yet another drop. The defense is in single high safety look with the defender playing a few yards away from Marshall, giving him a free release. Marshall runs a decent route, and gets open in the middle for a catch. Fitzpatrick sees him in the middle, but the star WR just drops the pass yet again. This was another big drop in the game, and Marshall has shown a penchant for dropping passes in the middle of the field this year.
The biggest contributor to this article was of course Brandon Marshall, but he also bailed out Ryan Fitzpatrick numerous times. Marshall had two big drops in the game (he actually had more) which cost the Jets big conversions.
Please read the first part of our film breakdown this week “Fitzmagic”, as well as “Sidekick Power” and
“Bad Magic” which will be posted shortly.
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