If there were a window in which the Jets could have stopped the Eagles’ offense on Sunday, it came with three minutes left in the third quarter.
Ashtyn Davis had knocked Gardner Minshew’s third-and-3 pass, intended for DeVonta Smith, to the ground. The Eagles, barely across midfield, kept their offense on the field. And the Jets packed 10 of their defenders between the line of scrimmage and the first-down marker — the 3 yards that separated the chances of shrinking a nine-point deficit or watching it grow more.
C.J. Mosley stood at the line of scrimmage, but as the play clock wound down to three seconds, he leapt across. The Eagles’ hard count had worked. His penalty moved the ball 5 yards, and two plays into the fourth quarter, they kicked a field goal to make their lead 30-18.
“Just a bad play by me,” Mosley said. “It was fourth down, that was a position where we knew that could’ve been a hard count. So that was just a very ill-advised play by me.”
It was one of six penalties the Jets committed in their 33-18 loss Sunday, but certain calls — or, in some cases, no-calls — had head coach Robert Saleh furious on the sidelines. When asked about officiating, he said, “I’m not gonna get into all that, you guys saw the game.”
When asked again about the Mosley play, Saleh said, “I’m just gonna keep it quiet, I’ll address it [Monday].
“Anytime, you gotta look at yourself first. There’s some self-inflicted wounds in there for sure, but we gotta be better in those regards.”
When Elijah Moore ran a route near the goal line in the fourth quarter, and a flag wasn’t thrown on Darius Slay, Saleh jumped in front of the referees walking back down the sideline and flung an arm in frustration. About two minutes earlier, the Jets appeared to have stopped the Eagles on a fourth-and-1 — when Minshew had tried to sneak forward. Chain measurement confirmed the call, but Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni challenged the spot and it was overturned.
Those replays and penalties, when paired with the scenarios they occurred in, combined to sink the Jets. Midway through the third quarter, with the Eagles on the Jets 28-yard line and facing a third-and-10, Bryce Hall dropped in coverage on Dallas Goedert and Elijah Riley faded over to assist.
Minshew’s pass fell short of Goedert, but a flag for defensive pass interference followed. That gave the Eagles a first-and-goal from the 7-yard line, and a Jake Elliott field goal followed to make their lead 27-18.
“We can handle the [miscues and penalties] that we’ve got control over, and those are the ones that are the most frustrating,” Saleh said.