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Ho-hum, just another in trend of boring Pats-Jets games

By Tom King - Staff Writer | Sep 20, 2021

Sunday was an absolutely gorgeous late summer/early fall day. We’re a little confused, what season is it really?

Basically, it’s just football season.Hopefully, you didn’t spend it indoors watching New England Patriots kicker Nick Folk, a former New York Jet, extending his franchise record streak of consecutive field goals to 33 with four boots at the MetLife Stadium in the Meadowlands.

In these days, you could check it out on your phone, no TV needed. That was the best choice, remote viewing without the remote. There’s not going to be any Patriots-Jets drama for a while judging from the Patriots’ 25-6 win on Sunday.

It was basically a snoozer, and what this win did was at least let you know a couple of things: One, the Patriots are a good team that can beat a bad team. And two, they should’ve won last week’s game over the Dolphins.

And three, your rookie quarterback is waaaaay better at this point then the Jets’ rookie QB. Mac Jones is smarter and more disciplined than New York’s Zach Wilson. Even though both look 19 and 15, respectively.

“They’re both pretty competitive kids,” Belichick said after the game.

Especially Jones, who ran down to block for Damien Harris on a TD run. But yikes, this is where we’re at. Two kids driving their respective busses. But one clearly has a better handle on the wheel, partly because he has better passengers.

Maybe it’ll be a good battle for years to come. Maybe not. Too soon to tell; Jones was his usual self, not trying to do too much, completing 22 of 30 for 186 yards. His only real rookie mistake was pulling a Cam Newton and tossing the ball into the turf early on for an obvious intentional grounding call.

Wilson, meanwhile, made a lot of rookie mistakes, including throwing four interceptions on his first 10 passes, and the first two he tossed were picked. The Jets put a lot on him, and he’s just not ready.

“He’s an aggressive quarterback,” said one the beneficiaries of that aggression, Patriots defensive back J.C. Jackson. “He’s aggressive, trying to make plays. He’s a rookie.”

The Jets don’t have much of an offensive line, and maybe they made the Patriots defense look good, but four takeaways and four sacks is a pretty good day, wouldn’t you think?

“In order to win the turnover margin we’ve got to go create turnovers,” Patriots safety Devin McCourty, who got an interception, said, noting Belichick always points to that turnover margin as an indicator of who wins.

But we would love to see more drama with these two teams. It looked a few years ago when the Jets drafted Sam Darnold we’d see that, and we did get his “Seeing ghosts out there” comment on a Monday night. But that’s more theatre than drama.

This was another boring rendition of the rivalry, it might take another year or two before it becomes good again. We’d love to see it. The Jets haven’t beaten the Patriots in six years, and they won’t do it this season, either. Since 2010, the Patriots hold a 20-3 advantage

Look, everything is a work in progress. Teams that looked good in Week 1 looked lousy in Week 2, including the Patriots’ next opponent, New Orleans. You think Bill Belichick confused Wilson yesterday, think of what he might do to Saints QB Jameis Winston, an interception machine two years ago, with the Gillette Stadium crowd roaring.

As Belichick said yesterday, “We did a lot of things better than we did last week.”

“He’ll continue to get better, we’ll continue to get better,” Pats veteran running back James White said. “There’s room for improvement for all of us.”

Let’s hope there’s room for this rivalry to sizzle at some point once again, but for now, it’s simply a boring, one-sided deal.

Tom King can be reached at tking@nashuatelegraph.com, or on twitter @Telegraph _TomK.

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