The blame game has started for the New York Jets.
ESPN’s Rich Cimini shared his stock report coming off of the Week 10 loss to the Arizona Cardinals on social media. The first note was stock down for the entire defense because of 20 missed tackles during the game highlighted by Sauce Gardner, which Cimini said was the “costliest miss” of the contest.
It didn’t take long for Gardner to respond on X previously Twitter saying, “Yup I’m 100% sure me missing that tackle at the beginning of the 2nd quarter for a gain of 17 yards was the costliest miss and that is in fact what lost us the game.”
Shortly after posting this response to Cimini, Gardner deleted the tweet but several fans screenshotted it.
Gardner’s Missed Tackle Was Incredibly Costly
While Gardner sarcastically poked holes at the importance of his missed tackle, it was an incredibly important play during the game.
With 10:20 remaining in the second quarter, Gardner had Cardinals tight end Trey McBride wrapped up on a third-and-seven play, which would have ended the drive.
However, McBride shook him aside and rumbled for 17 yards to gain the first down. At the time, Arizona was up 14-6, but they went up 21-6 after scoring a touchdown on that same drive.
There is a case to be made if the Jets get that stop, they could have gotten back into the game only down a single score. Instead, the game got out of hand and the Jets lost in blowout fashion.
Gardner, one of the best players on the Jets, trying to deflect blame after the loss is a terrible optic.
Interim Head Coach Jeff Ulbrich Put the Onus on Himself
“Defensively the story was tackling, 100%, and man coverage. We didn’t cover well and we didn’t tackle well. That was a collective effort. Whenever you get beat in coverage that is always an element of rush that goes into that whether you affect the quarterback or not, but it wasn’t good enough,” interim Jets head coach Jeff Ulbrich explained. “It was an egregious [and] criminal amount of missed tackles. Not good enough. We need to find ways to drill it better … That is where I’m so disappointed in myself that I didn’t get these guys prepared for this tackling game. We knew that was a point of emphasis and we thought we drilled it. Obviously we didn’t drill it well enough.”
Gardner’s tackling has been egregious this season.
Michael Nania of Jets X-Factor revealed that Gardner only missed 11.6% of tackles through his first two seasons. However this season he has been much worse. Back on October 29, Nania said Gardner had a 23.3% missed tackle rate this season which at the time was the seventh-highest figure among cornerbacks.
Nania added that his missed tackle rate is “more than twice as often as his previous career average.”
Gardner isn’t the only player on the team with tackling issues. The Jets’ 20 missed tackles in Week 10 “tied for the most by any team in a game this season” per Next Gen Stats via Cimini.
However, Gardner deflecting blame could have a trickle-down effect on the rest of the team which could create an even worse environment in the middle of a rough season.
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