CLEVELAND — If you’ve followed this franchise long enough, you probably don’t need any reminders that the Jets own a well-earned Ph.D in embarrassment for their work over the years.
Just when you think the level of the embarrassment has reached a peak, the Jets find a way to top it.
Thursday night, in front of a national TV audience as a stand-alone game at Cleveland Browns Stadium, was one of those nights.
Never mind the final score — Browns 37, Jets 20 — that was far closer than the game actually was as Cleveland put the Jets to sleep in a dominant first half.
Focus on Joe Flacco, the 38-year-old quarterback who played for the Jets the past three seasons and should have been their first phone-a-friend call five minutes after Aaron Rodgers crumpled to the Meadowlands turf clutching his left Achilles tendon in September.
Flacco, as you may have heard, is playing for the Browns now.
He’s been doing pretty well since being called off his couch in South Jersey to help a Cleveland team that lost franchise quarterback Deshaun Watson for the season.
And there he was on Thursday night, carving up a Jets defense that, before this season began, fancied itself in a conversation with the ’85 Bears defense.
Flacco finished 19 of 29 for 309 yards with three TDs and an INT. He threw for 296 of those yards and the three TDs in the first half, after which the Browns led 34-17.
The Jets’ defense had gone 33 consecutive games without allowing a 300-yard passer, dating back to Tom Brady in 2021 when he was playing for Tampa Bay.
Once Flacco was signed by the Browns last month, this game sitting on the schedule stood out like a hanging curveball.
If you’ve followed the Jets long enough, you saw this coming. You knew Flacco was going to embarrass his former team, even though he spoke so nice-nice this week about there being no hard feelings that they never called him after the Rodgers injury. People close to Flacco said he would have re-signed with the Jets in a New Jersey minute had they offered.
How it’s possible Flacco wasn’t called by the Jets will remain a mystery unless someone from the Jets (general manager Joe Douglas or head coach Robert Saleh) tells the actual truth.
The fact that the Jets felt their quarterback room, with Rodgers out for the season, was plenty sound enough with Zach Wilson and Tim Boyle and then Trevor Siemian, once he was signed, is a painful reminder of how badly they whiffed on this and left their season in peril.
And on Thursday night, Flacco made them pay, showed them what they’ve been missing since September as he quarterbacked the Browns to a playoff berth and won his fourth start in five games with them.
As the clock bled out in the fourth quarter, the capacity crowd chanted Flacco’s name. What a moment for Flacco. What an embarrassment for the Jets, another notch on their ever-expanding belt of these forgettable moments.
On the first Browns offensive possession, Flacco went 3 of 4 for 71 yards and a 7-yard TD pass to running back Jerome Ford for a 7-0 Cleveland lead.
On the second Browns possession, Flacco went 2 of 3 for 49 yards, highlighted by a 43-yard pass play to tight end David Njoku on third-and-12.
In the second quarter, Flacco went 6 of 7 for 72 yards on a series and capped it with an 8-yard TD pass to Elijah Moore for a 27-7 Cleveland lead.
More embarrassment added to the existing Flacco-induced embarrassment: Moore is a receiver whom the Jets drafted and then fell out of love with when he got selfish and ranted on social media about not being targeted enough.
Flacco did have one hiccup — because he’s prone to them on occasion — when he got greedy trying to complete a screen pass that Jets defensive end Jermaine Johnson broke up, picked off and returned 33 yards for a TD to cut the Cleveland lead to 27-14.
Hope, however, lasted just a few fleeting moments for the Jets, who may have thought they were back in the game trailing by only two possessions.
Flacco leaked all over that hope on the very next series when he connected with Ford on a wild 50-yard scoring pass to give Cleveland a 34-14 lead with 1:25 remaining in the first half.
On the scoring play, Flacco was hit in the head by on rushing Jets defensive tackle Quinnen Williams and then rolled to his left as Williams continued the chase and hit Ford in stride.
If there was a back-breaking play in this game, this was the one, and it featured an aging quarterback calmly escaping the Jets’ best defensive player and showing them what they’ve been missing these past few months for not picking up the damn telephone back in September and calling him.
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