In the days leading up to Sunday’s game against the Dolphins, Jets coach Rex Ryan stole a line from linebacker Bart Scott when he was asked how the team was going to deal with Miami running back Reggie Bush.
“Obviously we have to do a great job of getting a lot of guys to him and then get him on the ground. Put some hot sauce on him, if you will,” Ryan said.
Bush wound up getting knocked out of the game with a knee injury just before halftime and he didn’t return to the game in the second half. The Dolphins missed his productivity -- Bush had 61 yards on 10 carries before his exit -- and Jets linebacker Calvin Pace said that was just what the Jets defense needed to do.
“I guess he was doing his thing for a quarter or two,” Pace said, via Manish Mehta of the New York Daily News. “We had to put him on out. We didn’t see him again.”
It sounds a bit unseemly to hear Pace say that they “had to put him on out” after hearing Ryan’s desire to break out the hot sauce, but there doesn’t seem to be anything but bad fortune to blame for Bush’s injury, which looks like it will keep him out for a couple of weeks. It happened when he took a helmet to the knee while being tackled by several Jets. It appears to be linebacker Garrett McIntyre’s helmet making contact after it is forced down by Bush’s shoulder as both players went down to the turf. No one went after Bush’s knee on the play, but it became a casualty all the same.
Adam Schefter of ESPN reports the NFL isn’t expected to offer any discipline as a result of Pace’s comments, ill-advised as they might have been.