Oh please. Let's stop with that. The coaching staff has been excellent throughout the season. Bill O'Brien has been great throughout the season. Tonight he screwed the pooch. Execution and coaching were absolutely horrible.
1. The fake punt was one of the worst calls I've seen. IMO, you never attempt a fake punt unless you've crossed the 50 yard line. We were on our own 30 which meant that failure had the Jets already in field goal range. With Sanchez playing the way he was playing (relying on dump offs and short routes and not going deep), that move played right into the Jets hands. We have not been a particularly successful team going for it on fourth down and that only added to it. Shades of Indy in 2009 all over again.
2. Anybody still convinced that interior O-Line and DE are not issues which need to be dealt with early on in the draft? The interior blocking, particularly from Koppen and Connolly, was absolutely dreadful today. The Jets were getting pressure up the middle all day. This team could definitely use a youth movement at both C and RG. On the other side of the ball, the Jets didn't have to run up the middle. They were taking what they pleased on the outside all game long. DE must improve and, not to kick a dead horse, but this was really a spot where we could have used Seymour... AGAIN. Furthermore, Ninkovich is sub-par (and that's putting it kindly) at setting the edge. We need another OLB as well.
3. Defensively, Chung is still an issue in coverage. The Jets were going after him a lot today and, most of the time, Chung was behind the man he was supposed to be covering. Darius Butler was again abused by Braylon Edwards. McCourty looked like a rookie out there today, but was not nearly as bad in coverage as some of his counterparts. Bodden coming back healthy will be a welcome sight for this secondary as Holmes had his way at times with Arrington.
4. Brady hasn't resembled the quarterback of the past in the playoffs in the last couple of seasons. Last season, against Baltimore, he never looked comfortable in the pocket and was missing receiver after receiver. I dismissed that performance because I believed that he got hurt on the Ray Lewis sack and his O-Line didn't show up at all. They didn't show up in the first half today either, but there were moments where he had time and was throwing it at the feet of receivers who weren't even looking at him. He looked skittish and jittery in the pocket even when there wasn't any pressure on him. Suffice it to say that this team lived by Brady all season and, today, they very much died by him.
5. O'Brien made some very bad decisions today that he didn't usually make in the regular season. The Jets were playing man coverage and were typically dropping a safety down into the box leaving one safety deep. With that in mind, the TE's should have been burning up the seam (particularly Gronk) to make them pay for that. It worked sporadically throughout the game when we actually let Gronk run routes. But Gronk, from what I saw, was relegated to blocking mostly later in the game. The sad thing was that, a lot of the time, Light had his man handled and Gronk wasn't blocking anybody. When you have a 6'7" TE like him and you aren't using him, something's wrong. Do I even have to bring up the abundance of running plays with five minutes to go or BB yelling at him to throw the football on the sidelines? Horrible decision. The team should have stopped giving Woodhead handoffs and should have relegated that duty to BJGE. Woodhead was relatively ineffective in the running game until the fourth quarter when the Jets were letting the Pats run the ball to help kill the clock. Woodhead should have only been used in the passing game. Another failure by BOB.
In all, there were failures in both execution and coaching today. But the coaching failures were MUCH more noticeable than they had been at any point in the regular season.
