Ed Reed still hasn’t won a game this year. And the Jets still can’t defend the deep ball.
But Jets coach Rex Ryan wasn’t about to connect those two dots.
Despite Reed being in the vicinity of Jacoby Jones before a back-breaking 66-yard touchdown pass, Ryan insisted it wasn’t the veteran safety’s fault.
“I’m not going to pin it on any one individual,” Ryan said, via Neil Best of Newsday. “Certainly not on one guy. Certainly not Ed Reed. He’d probably be third on that list, in all honesty.”
The Jets were stacked in a deep coverage designed to prevent such a play, but Reed said he couldn’t find the ball.
“I never really saw the ball,” he said. “I should have played it different. I probably should have just grabbed Jacoby and took the pass interference instead, given the position I was in. . . .
“I mean, they had the wind; it’s just that simple. It was like, here comes a shot . . . What would you do? I tell one of the fastest guys to just run deep and locate the ball, and that’s what he did.”
Sunday was the second time Reed’s lost to the Ravens this year, after once with the Texans before he was cut. And since he missed Houston’s two-game win streak to start the year, and has lost his first two with the Jets, he’s still waiting to experience a victory this season.
“You hate to be on this side of the fence, but somebody wins and somebody has to lose,” he said. “It’s a child’s game we play. We had fun. We have to make our corrections and have to be ready to play next week.”
And while they prepare, they’ll still be working on fixing the problem Reed was supposed to solve.