After Saturday's disconcerting loss to the New York Giants, the Jets are in jeopardy of missing the playoffs for the first time in the Rex Ryan era.
On NFL Network
"NFL Replay" will re-air the Giants' 29-14 win over the Jets on Tuesday, Dec. 27 at 8 p.m. ET.
For all of Ryan's bold and brash talk the Jets repeatedly have failed to deliver big-time performances, and now they need a whole of help to make a third-straight trip to the postseason. If the Jets fail to get that help, and they spend most of January watching other teams compete for a Super Bowl title, someone surely will have to take the blame for the team's shortcomings.
The New York Post wrote Monday, that there's a good chance that person could be offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer, whose contract runs through the end of the 2013 season.
The Jets rank 27th in the NFL in total offense, and they dropped back to pass 68 times to only 25 called runs Saturday -- not a typical formula for success in the three years Mark Sanchez has been the team's quarterback.
After the game, Sanchez, who's facing his own group of doubters, defended his coordinator's gameplan and said a lack of execution was to blame for the poor results.
"When we got the ball back with five minutes left, people are saying, 'Why don't you run the ball? Why don't you run the ball?' " Sanchez said, via the Post. "It's easy to say that now, but we had just driven the ball all the way down the field throwing the heck out of it. We were going with what was working. If you look back, who knows what could have happened if we kept running, but that's not fair. That's not fair to Schotty. I thought he called a great game. We just didn't execute the plays that were called."