Everything's Ugly for Jets in 30-9 Loss

Jets stumble early and often in loss to Dolphins

The Jets must have thought MetLife Stadium was in one of the evacuation zones. 

That's the easiest explanation for the team's performance against the Dolphins during Sunday's humiliating 30-9 loss. It dropped the Jets' record to 3-5 heading into their bye week and will surely touch off a feeding frenzy of epic proportions on what's rapidly become the carcass of another Jets season. 

Miami started the game by driving down the field for a field goal and then grabbed an onside kick against the sleepy-eyed Jets special teams. They would lose quarterback Ryan Tannehill to a left quad and knee injury on their second possession, but it didn't do much to hurt them against a Jets team that didn't look ready to play. 

The onside kick would be the first of multiple disasters for that unit, which included a punt block for a touchdown and a blocked field goal just before halftime that sucked even more life out of a team that didn't have much coming in. 

The same can't be said of a crowd that got angrier and angrier as the afternoon progressed into a series of further degradations from the Jets. Mark Sanchez turned the ball over twice, got sacked four times and looked as erratic and uncomfortable in the offense as at any other point this season. 

Plenty of other offensive players brought their Z games. Stephen Hill had another terrible drop, the running game never developed and things just kept getting worse and worse for a unit that never seems to hit bottom.

The crowd's reaction was as you'd expect and it will only get worse once the day after stories start coming. We'd like to think the Jets will handle it without coming apart at the seams, but history suggests that's not the likeliest outcome. 

Obviously the big question is whether the Jets will turn to Tebow for any extended period this season and this might be the moment for it to happen. The bye would give the team time to install a Tebow-centric offense before their next game and perhaps shoot some energy back into a team that showed none of the fight they had in New England. 

Whether or not they do, it's getting much more difficult to believe that there's some better day coming for Sanchez and that the Jets have something to lose by looking at their other option. He has his days where he looks better, but they don't come consistently enough and there are far too many of these abject disasters for any team to stomach.

The defense will likely escape much anger because of the offense's showing, but they weren't much better. Matt Moore was able to make enough plays to lead the Dolphins to points and the defense was never able to make a play to swing things back in the Jets' direction.

It's not going to be fun to be Rex Ryan, Mike Tannenbaum or anyone else associated with the Jets for the next two weeks. If they don't come up with something pretty miraculous, the eight after that won't be much better.  

Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.

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