On a night when the Jets went with their two young quarterbacks and didn't get a lot accomplished in their passing game, they hitched their wagon to their youthful running backs, who pulled their team to a 15-12 road win over the Carolina Panthers on Saturday night.
"I thought our running back room as a collective whole, they were running the ball really, really hard, downhill, violent," head coach Robert Saleh said of his backfield that didn't have sideline observer Breece Hall for the second game but got positive yardage out of five backs plus those two QBs. "I'm looking forward to looking at this tape because there's some good stuff to look at."
The stat sheet wasn't necessarily one of those sights for sore eyes. The Jets totaled 117 rush yards on 28 carries, a solid but not eye-popping 4.2 yards/carry. They amassed seven first downs. The only double-digit yardage run of the night by a Jets back was Israel Abanikanda's 12-yarder.
On the other hand, the Jets rode five field goals, four by Austin Seibert to the win. And while the sledding was a little tough, the backs were not tackled for any losses and still outgained the passing game with those 117 yards to the 85 net yards compiled by Andrew Peasley and Adrian Martinez.
Braelon Allen, the big-bopping fourth-round rookie, didn't get the start vs. the Panthers — fifth-round rookie Isaiah Davis did — but still provided some of the muscle and movement in one of the key drives of the game.
"Braelon, he had a couple," Saleh said of the 6-1, 235-pound Wisconsin product. "It was third-and-5, third-and-6 and he had a violent 4-yard run where he just moved the entire pile. We picked him for a lot of reasons, because he's actually really good out of the backfield in route-running, he's really good in protection, too, we think he's an all-around good back, a very powerful runner, too. And he's displaying that down in, down out."
On the drive in question, Allen had seven of his eight carries, with each one gaining either 3 or 4 yards, no more, no less, and also caught a pair of Peasley passes for 12 yards. A 4-yard burst up the gut to the Carolina 45 converted a second-and-3, and his 4-yarder followed by another 4-yarder on third-and-2 brought the ball to the Panthers 18.
That was Allen's last touch of the game, but the Jets cashed in with Greg Zuerlein's only field goal to tie the score at 3-3 at the half. The drive totaled 17 plays including the FG, traveled just 49 yards (37 of them by Allen) but took 8:48 off the game clock — the Green & White's longest preseason drive by time since 2021. And it set the stage for a mini halftime sandwich, with that field goal before the break and then the three-point lead on the first drive of the second half giving the visitors their first lead of the game.
That was Abanikanda's drive. After Brandon Codrington's 63-yard kickoff return, Abanikanda reeled off that 12-yard toss sweep to the Carolina 20. In short order came Austin Seibert's first of four field goals. Then on the Jets' second FG series of that quarter, Izzy powered the offense with back-to-back totes of 5 and 6 yards to the Panthers 28, close enough for Seibert to strike again, this time from 52 yards for a 9-6 lead that the Jets never lost.
"Izzy, I thought he did a good job in the third quarter being decisive, getting his foot in the ground, getting vertical," Saleh said.
As mentioned, the numbers weren't monstrous but they were just what the Jets needed on this night. Davis' mostly first-quarter work netted him four carries for 14 yards, with Allen following in the second frame with eight for 27. Abanikanda in the third period had six carries for 29 yards. Peasley and Martinez added 29 yards mostly on scrambles. Add it all together and Aaron Rodgers was impressed.
"If you can't stop the run, you're not going to stop a lot of people," Aaron Rodgers, who watched from the sideline again, said during his fourth-quarter sideline interview with WCBS-TV's Ian Eagle and Anthony Becht. "The league is very cyclical, and it's coming back to teams wanting to establish their run games.
"Look at our backs and you've got to be excited about Zero [Allen] and 32 [Davis], the way they've played this preseason. And then Breece is such a different player this year."
If the Jets' Zero and 32 minus 20 (Hall) can excite 8 (Rodgers), that mathematics should be music to the ears of the Jets and their fans.
