NFL players like to talk about stacking wood and laying bricks. Similarly, the facts and stats for the Jets' defense, mostly in the pass-rush area, piled up like planes over LaGuardia and Shea Stadium back in the old days.
"Just like anyone, I feel like anytime you're getting pressured that much, or you're getting hit, it's going to affect any quarterback, right?" Houston HC DeMeco Ryans said of QB C.J. Stroud and his offense. "That's always the game plan defensively is trying to fluster the quarterback, and that's what they did today."
"To come out here on a primetime game and get embarrassed like that is never fun," Stroud said. "We got kicked from Point A to Point Z."
The Texans did gain 322 total yards, led by the running of rejuvenated RB Joe Mixon and Stroud's elusive scrambling. But they were just 1-for-4 in red zone TDs and Stroud was just 4-for-14 passing in the second half and 11-for-30 on the night. The Jets' defense definitely got the young star off his spot more than enough times for the win. Here are a few of those Green & White brickbats:
■ Stroud is one of the NFL's most productive young QBs, but something happens when the Houston signal-caller visits the Meadowlands to play the Jets. Last December he threw for 91 yards, his second-lowest total in his 26 pro starts, and subtracting 4 sacks for 38 yards, his 53 net passing yards were the lowest of his career.
Thursday, Stroud rang up more yardage, 191, but with the Jets' 8 sacks for 56 yards, that reduced his net passing to 135 yards, fourth-lowest of his career. The Jets didn't stop all his explosive plays but it threw him off his game. In the two meetings combined, Stroud has completed 21 of 53 passes (39.6%) for no INTs but also no TD passes.
■ Stroud had several prime harassers in green and white, most notably DL Quinnen Williams, who posted 1.5 sacks for the second consecutive game and enjoyed the ninth multi-sack game of his 6-season career. Q also had 4 QB hits for the second time since 2019 after whacking Seahawks QB Geno Smith, the former Jet, 4 times late in 2022. Williams and Smith may meet again when the teams play in a month, this time at MetLife, on Dec. 1 after the Jets' bye.
■ Other Jets with heavy-pressure profiles included DL Micheal Clemons and LB Jamien Sherwood with 2 sacks each. Will McDonald, still the Jets' sack leader with 8 takedowns, had no sacks and 1 QB hit, but he recovered the stripsack administered by Clemons to end a Houston drive that had gotten to the Jets 11 midway through the first quarter. It was the first strip of Clemons' career and the third by the Jets this season after just two strips all last season.
■ The Jets have 31 sacks over their first 9 games. That's second in the NFL before the rest of the schedule kicks off beginning Sunday, trailing only the Giants' 35 sacks. And those 31 sacks are the second-most in the first 9 games of any Jets/Titans season, behind only — three guesses and the first two are wrong — the 1981 NY Sack Exchange group that had 36 of its team-record 66 sacks after 9 games of their then-16-game season.
■ A non-sack defensive number worth mentioning: S Jalen Mills, filling in ably as a starter for the injured Chuck Clark, played in his 110th NFL game Thursday (86 starts) and did something he did only once before in his 9-season career. His 10 tackles not only led the Jets but marked only his second double-digit tackle game. The only other time, he notched 12 stops for the Eagles at home against the Giants in his second NFL season.
T-Mo Lets It Fly
Punts are special teams elements but they 're also considered part of a good defense because of where they can set up the opposing offense. And P Thomas Morstead provided one of the best defensive punts in franchise history when he placed a perfect kick 54 yards in the air before it bounced and hugged the right sideline, to be downed by Jarrick Bernard-Converse at the Houston 2.
The 75-yard gross punt was the 5th-longest in Jets lore and the longest since Robert Malone's 84-yarder vs. Tampa Bay at MetLife in 2013. And the 75-yard net was the longest net punt in the NFL since 2022 and the 2nd-longest in franchise history, trailing only Steve O'Neal's iconic 98-yard gross and net punt at Denver in 1968.
Disappointing, then, that from the opponents' 2, the Jets D allowed its worst drive of Halloween night, the 14-play, 98-yard, 8:23 march to the Texans' only touchdown of the game. It was the longest drive by yards since the Giants' 99-yard drive in 2011. But it all worked out OK for a second straight Thursday night game in this potentially resuscitated Jets season.
