Offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur met with the media Thursday in his usual weekly appearance. As you would expect, he was grilled with questions regarding the team’s inefficiencies in the red zone — the Jets went 1/6 in the red zone — and the final play with the Braxton Berrios drop in the Jets’ 27-22 loss to the Minnesota Vikings in Week 13.
The session started with LaFleur discussing what he saw after re-watching what happened on Sunday and, while he was proud of his guys and how they responded, he didn’t seem happy with their level of execution.
Yeah, I mean we just, we didn’t execute at the level that we were getting to that point, particularly in the second half. I was proud of the way the guys responded, we obviously dug ourselves in a hole. There were numerous reasons for that, but going into halftime, making some adjustments, and just each position coach and position group talking about what they needed to do just a little bit better. We were just a little off in the first half, and again, dug ourselves in a hole, and we got ourselves in a position to go win that game, and battled every series. We got down to the 20, it was a collection of errors, so we got to get that fixed as coaches, the execution was just a little bit off. Not crazy off, but anytime you’re one for six, if you’re one for two, it’s not good enough in the redzone, let alone one for six. You’re going to kick field goals, you’re going to lose ballgames in this League against good teams.
LaFleur also touched on the notion that he should have just called a sneak with the team right at the goal line.
It was a little outside the one-yard-line, I know the easy answer is just sneak it, just sneak it. Well, we snuck it the series before that, and we were about an inch away, and I’m surprised they overturned that one, to be honest with you. There was about six angles that we saw, I did think he got in, but the TV copy was just so dang close, and I didn’t want to put our guys in that situation again. In hindsight, yeah, whatever play would’ve worked is the play I wanted to call, but we’re going to stick with it, it is what it is, we need to get better from it, I need to get better from it, and we can’t let that situation beat us twice.
Here’s the full quote from LaFleur for those interested with his insight on the drive that ended at the one-yard line.
We called the first play, on the first down, up the middle got four, it was an awesome, awesome run by Bam (Zonovan Knight). I’m not going to get into details of every little thing, but we could have been a little bit better at our execution right there to make sure it wasn’t even on Bam to get it down to the one. Second down, ran up the middle again, they brought the pressure right there, and the safety made a very good play. We could have made a quick adjustment, that’s on me in terms of making sure that that safety had more of a hat on him and so on the third down, I called an RPO to make sure I gave our guys a chance versus an all-out type pressure. It was a little outside the one-yard-line, I know the easy answer is just sneak it, just sneak it. Well, we snuck it the series before that, and we were about an inch away, and I’m surprised they overturned that one, to be honest with you. There was about six angles that we saw, I did think he got in, but the TV copy was just so dang close, and I didn’t want to put our guys in that situation again. In hindsight, yeah, whatever play would’ve worked is the play I wanted to call, but we’re going to stick with it, it is what it is, we need to get better from it, I need to get better from it, and we can’t let that situation beat us twice.
LaFleur said he felt very comfortable with the fourth-down play call and said he just wanted to get players open and that’s why they came out in an empty formation on fourth down at the goal line.
Yeah, that was a play that we were extremely comfortable with. I mean we’ve been running that six or seven weeks in practice, waiting for that opportunity. I know it’s a little unorthodox maybe to go empty in that situation, but the point was to get people open and we did that, we just didn’t execute it to get the touchdown.
The question now becomes how dows LaFleur learn and continue to grow from this, especially heading into a key rematch with the Buffalo Bills and a chance to solidify their standing in the AFC playoff picture.