How the Jets sabotaged Jeff Ulbrich in his coaching debut

Jeff Ulbrich desperately needed some help. The Bills had taken it to the Jets, gashed them in the ground while Josh Allen seemingly toyed with Ulbrich’s defense, and thought they would be carrying a 20-10 halftime lead into the locker room. They thought wrong. Rodgers, first-and-10 at his 48, launched the Hail Ulbrich from his 43.Time expired while the ball was in the air. Allen Lazard leaped for the ball and the three Bills who surrounded him leaped with him. Lazard came down with it. It was Rodgers’ fourth Hail Mary TD.

No other player in the NFL has more than two touchdowns on a Hail Mary since 2008. It made Ulbrich, a 23-20 loser, look like a genius for calling a pair of timeouts at a time when a trash-talking Allen was engineering a drive that concluded with an 11-yard TD pass to Dawson Knox with 21 seconds left before intermission. Alas, it takes more than Aaron Rodgers completing a Hail Ulbrich to beat Josh Allen. You can blame Rodgers for not getting his team in the end zone first-and-goal at the 3-yard line, and you can blame him for not winning it when Ulbrich needed him to win it in the fourth quarter. Rodgers threw for a season-high 294 yards.This one isn’t on him. The real blame belongs to Ulbrich’s coveted defense and field kicker Greg Zuerlein who sabotaged the Jets and prevented them from a share of first place. And 11 penalties that had Jets fans muttering to themselves: Same Old Saleh Jets. And Aaron Rodgers isn’t Josh Allen and the Jets aren’t the Bills. Ulbrich would be forced to ask Rodgers, starting at his 30, for one last favor trailing 23-20 with 3:43 and three timeouts remaining. He tried what amounted to a third-and-16 Hail Ulbrich, and Mike Williams slipped and Taron Johnson intercepted with 1:52 left. Rodgers was brought here to beat Josh Allen and the Bills on a Monday night at MetLife Stadium with a share of first place on the line, no matter who, Robert Saleh or Jeff Ulbrich, was standing on the sideline ...