Let me first say I'm thrilled with our win last night to take 1st place in the division, and beating our rivals in their own house. Having said that, I had a look back at the scoreboards of our previous games, and something stuck out: our lack of 3rd quarter production. Jets: 7 0 0 0 3 0 7 10 0 0 = 27 Opp : 0 10 7 21 0 7 3 3 3 8 = 62 It seems we do a lot better in the first half, and 4th quarter of games for some reason. Are the opposition just better at making adjustments at half time?
Honestly it felt like we came out flat in the 2nd half. We were playing inspired the first half but looked like a different team in the 3rd quarter.
Well, there's more to the story if you look at the coin toss. Correlate the numbers with the Jets coin tosses: (O means opponent started the 3rd with the Ball, J for Jets) Week 1: J- 7 points. Week 2: O- 0 points. Week 3: O- 0 points. Week 4: O- 0 points. BYE Week 6: O- 3 points. Week 7: O- 0 points. Week 8: O- 7 points. Week 9: O- 10 points. Week 10: O- 0 points. Week 11: O- 0 points. Kinda surprising statistics, huh? The Jets have started the 3rd quarter with the ball once this entire season! (I would've simplified this list by saying "we only got the ball once," but I myself didn't realize we'd been so lop-sided until I got about halfway done). This goes a long way towards defeating the myth that "we only play one half of football" or "we collapse in the second half." Furthermore, I would like to suggest the notion that our coin tosses (including two wins in OT) are evidence of divine providence. GO JETS! If you wanted to get cocky, you could even say that when we've opened the second half with the ball, we've NEVER let the opponent score in the third!!! Yeah, bitches!
Haha, very interesting take on those stats Jcotchrocket. It does help put things in perspective a bit. Hard to believe we've won that many coin tosses.
unfortunately it doesn't mean that we won that many coin tosses. New this year the coin toss winner could defer receipt of the kickoff. I think the Pats did that the first time they played the Jets this year..
I have one possible explanation. If we've been ahead in most games we've played in going into the half, and assuming our game plan has been working, is there any reason to make major adjustments on something that's clicking along pretty well? Last night, for example, we all knew Belichick would come out of the lockeroom at halftime with a whole new set of things. He needed to. Therefor, the implementation of any adjustments WE made during the half were also subject to seeing what Belichick was going to pull out of his bag of tricks. I don't know, just trying to think out loud on this one. I've always been more scared of what a team is going to come out looking like if we've been pushing them around in the first half, like we did last night.
Interesting. This explains lower 3rd quarter production. We might have been ahead at the half more times than not too, so it would have been the other team that made the adjustments and then came out and implemented them, thereby costing us time to pick up on it and adjust ourselves.
