Immediately following Monday's 41-10 loss to the Colts, head coach Todd Bowles was visibly upset with the team's effort. On Tuesday's conference call, Bowles said the effort was better than he originally thought after watching film and credited "boneheaded" mistakes as a major contributor the team's poor performance. Through one and a half quarters of Monday's contest, the Green & White were flagged for three personal fouls, one of which put the Colts on the Jets' 9-yard line.
"We got effort, we just didn't play with much intelligence last night," Bowles said. "How you address it? It is what it is. When you get in this business, you coach and play for your job every day; win, lose or draw. That's no different now."
Relief EvaluationThe big news from Bowles' postgame press conference was the announcement QB Bryce Petty would start the remaining four games of the season, barring injury. Bowles told the media Tuesday that his decision was made up a couple weeks ago as long as the Jets were out of contention.
As for an assessment of Monday's second-half appearance:
"Obviously I don't like the turnovers," Bowles said. "But when you go into a game down 31-3, you know the team is just playing and just letting you dump balls off. So it's too much you can show, you have to see him get a game under his belt where he can run, pass and have some options to do some things."
New Faces, New PlacesQB Ryan Fitzpatrick said Monday he would talk to coach Bowles to determine his role moving forward. Well, Coach has spoken and Fitz will backup Petty. However, he did not rule out the possibility of having rookie Christian Hackenberg serve as Petty's backup later in the season.
"He hadn't had the reps, the other guys have taken all the reps," Bowles said about Hackenberg. "If I threw him in there right now, it would be a disservice to the kid."
Bowles also alluded to the fact that quarterback might not be the only position undergoing changes.
"We'll meet with the coaches later on," he said. "I have my opinions on a few people, but we'll talk about it."
Tuesday afternoon, the Green & White let go of RB-KR C.J. Spiller and WR-KR Jeremy Ross. Spiller recently saw an increase in playing time over the past two weeks — he saw the field an average of 18.5% of offensive snaps, primarily appearing in sub packages. Ross, who re-signed with the team Nov. 22, took over kick and punt return duties and registered 120 yards on 6 kickoff returns in Monday's loss.
"We have a couple guys coming back that we wanted to see," Bowles said of their releases. "Our receivers are getting healthy and we had too many at the spot for Ross. Spiller we wanted to take a look at and we wanted to go from there."
InjuriesAfter the re-aggravation of C Nick Mangold's ankle injury that sidelined him for four games, Bowles said it's a possibility he could be placed on the IR, but will wait for test results before making any decisions.
