Patriots-Jets Week 6 Recap: Pats win a sloppy one

Patriots win a sloppy one 26-19, and lose three more linemen doing it

The bottom line: Drake Maye threw three touchdown passes, Charles Woods intercepted Geno Smith’s first pass of the season to be picked off, and New England beat the Jets 26-19 at Gillette Stadium. The Patriots are 4-2 and have won three in a row. They also lost three offensive linemen to injury during the game.

Maye threw three more touchdowns

The bottom line: Maye completed 18 of 32 for 235 yards with three touchdowns and no interceptions, his third straight game with at least three touchdown passes.

The details:

• Romeo Doubs caught a diving 42-yard touchdown in the first quarter on a two-play, 42-yard drive. DeMario Douglas added a 9-yard score with 14 seconds left in the half. Hunter Henry caught a 7-yarder to open the fourth quarter.
• Andy Borregales missed the extra point after Henry’s touchdown, leaving it 23-13.
• Douglas had a team-high seven catches for 86 yards.
• Corey Kiner led New England in rushing with 57 yards on 11 carries. Rhamondre Stevenson ran 14 times for 36 yards, and TreVeyon Henderson, questionable coming in, carried seven times for 31.
• New England outgained New York 383 yards to 324 and went 8 of 15 on third down to the Jets’ 3 of 10.

What Maye said: “It was sloppy. It wasn’t clean,” he said. “It wasn’t football that we felt like (was) complementary.”

Three offensive linemen left injured

The bottom line: Right tackle Morgan Moses (ankle), left guard Alijah Vera-Tucker (hamstring) and right guard Ben Brown (knee) all went out, ESPN reported.

The details:

• New England had already been without Mike Onwenu and Greg Van Roten, both on injured reserve, and Will Campbell was questionable going in with a knee injury.
• The Jets did not record a single sack. They had eight against Cleveland the week before.
• “Those guys are playing through injuries,” Maye said. “We (had) three go down today, so these guys are fighting hard. They’re fighting their butts off, and it goes through them.”

The defense got Gonzalez back and held in the red zone

The bottom line: New York went 0 for 3 inside the 20 and was stopped on fourth-down runs on consecutive second-quarter possessions.

The details:

• Christian Gonzalez returned from a two-game absence with a shoulder injury. “Those plays are huge for us. I’m just proud of the defense, how we stayed together,” he said. “They got some momentum there late and we were just able to finish the game.”
• Milton Williams, Christian Barmore and Elijah Ponder each sacked Smith. Ponder’s came in the red zone and forced a 36-yard field goal.
• Woods picked off Smith in the fourth quarter on his 166th pass of the season, ending the longest interception-free start of Smith’s career.
• Smith finished 20 of 30 for 252 yards. Rookie Omar Cooper Jr., back from injured reserve after missing four games with an ankle injury, caught six passes for 103 yards and a 48-yard touchdown, the first 100-yard game of his career.
• New England turned it over twice. Jets rookie edge rusher David Bailey stripped Henderson and Jamien Sherwood recovered at the New England 36. Sherwood later punched the ball away from Douglas and Minkah Fitzpatrick recovered, setting up a Jason Sanders field goal that made it a one-score game with 7:20 left.
• The Patriots answered with a 13-play drive that ran more than six minutes and ended in a 27-yard Borregales field goal.

Brown’s return was quiet

The bottom line: A.J. Brown caught three passes for 27 yards on a team-high 10 targets in his first game since Week 1.

The details:

• His timing was off and he had three drops on those 10 targets, ESPN reported.
• Brown was activated from injured reserve on Saturday after missing four games with a high-ankle sprain. New England scored 45 against the Raiders in the game before he came back, and had won at Buffalo the week before that.
• New England has now won four straight against the Jets and 19 of the last 21 meetings between them.

What Vrabel said: “None of us were at our best today, but we were good enough.”

What Aaron Glenn said: “What it came down to is two things: our ability to finish and man, our detail when it comes to defensive football.”

The Patriots play at Chicago on Thursday night.

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Our take

We said Patriots 24, Jets 13, lay the 7 and take the Under. It finished 26-19. The winner was the easy part, and the rest of it we got wrong in the direction we should have seen coming.

We spent the preview worried about eight sacks and a rookie edge rusher, and the Jets finished with none. Then New England lost three linemen anyway, in-game, to injuries nobody was rushing. The line is a problem, and it turns out the problem is availability rather than any particular opponent.

Brown is the other note. Three catches on 10 targets with three drops is not a disaster for a receiver who had not played since Week 1, and Maye still threw for three scores while looking for him. But the offense that put up 45 the week before did it without him, and now there is a timing problem to solve on a short week.

4-2 with three straight wins, and Chicago on Thursday. After the start they had, we’ll take it.