MNF Recap / Bryce Young Painwatch

Monday Night Football: Jets 19, 49ers 32

It took until almost the fourth quarter for Aaron Rodgers, trailing at that point 26-7, to complete a pass to a non-Garrett Wilson or Breece Hall receiver — Allen Lazard caught a pass. Then he caught a touchdown, as Rodgers chucked it deep on a free play. And it was able to seed just enough “he can still play” doubt to make up for the fact that I watched those first three quarters and all that really happened was some one-on-one winners to Garrett Wilson.

My doubts about the Jets up until that point had mostly been validated. Their defense had a hard time dealing not with Christian McCaffrey, but fill-in Jordan Mason. Sauce Gardner was confusingly sat down for most of the game after the first quarter. Brock Purdy had a dizzying array of well-placed passes to get the 49ers to 26 points, including a Brandon Aiyuk end zone drop that should have stretched the lead even further.

I’m mostly willing to give the Jets the benefit of the doubt for most of this game — we’re not a Jump To Conclusions Outlet here. The 49ers are a tough draw for anybody. While their defense is no longer the DeMeco Ryans 49ers Defense, it’s still plenty tough and has Joey Bosa, Fred Warner, Javon Hargrave, Charvarius Ward, and so on. If you were to circle a game you felt the Jets were likely to lose coming into the season, this was certainly in the top 3 if not the tippy top of the list.

But it sure wasn’t a pretty game, nor was it an especially auspicious introduction to the idea that the Jets would be able to stay with elite teams. When the 49ers faced a fourth-and-short and it looked obvious the Jets would be passing in the fourth quarter, they immediately pressed and forced an incompletion rather easily.

Rodgers still showed me just enough as a football player to remain curious and not completely write him off. My suspicions about the Jets as a whole? Mostly verified early. The offensive line didn’t do much to get extra push in the running game. Mike Williams barely played and the receiving depth is not optimal, even if Lazard finally came alive. I’d say the Jets have a lot to prove next week against the Titans. Maybe they should try paying Haason Reddick, since they barely laid a hand on Brock Purdy.

Oh, and Jordan Mason? Not your fault that the 49ers decided to bubble wrap Christian McCaffrey and then you inadvertently revealed that. That’s an org problem, not a you problem.

Congrats to Robert Saleh for making the score look marginally closer by getting Tyrod Taylor to lead a last-minute touchdown drive. If anyone important had gotten hurt on that you’d be public enemy No. 1, but you survived.

Any Given Slaughter: Bryce Young

Longtime readers may remember that one of my old duties for Football Outsiders was to write a column called “Any Given Sunday,” which was about the biggest upset of the week and how it happened. But given that it is the blowout losses that are (usually) ultimately a bigger deal than the close ones in the grand scheme of how good a team is, I thought I’d subvert the column. Let’s take the biggest blowout of the week and put it under the microscope.