The Chargers come to MetLife Stadium on the 7th for Week 9 of the regular season of the NFL and the Jets look to defend home turf against the Las Angeles team.
The Jets are currently set as the underdog in this matchup according to betting offers, but only barely. Both teams are in a similar place in their season and a win here could be very important for the coming weeks and for team morale.
Obviously, there’s no telling what could happen and if anything the only sure thing is that Monday night football will shake up our expectations and deliver us a thrilling start to the week, but let’s break down this match up somewhat and see what we’re in for on the 7th.
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Both of these teams are coming off wins it’s true, but by far the Chargers looked cleaner in their game against the Chicago Bears. The Chargers were able to put on what could be called a clinic, putting the Bears down 30 – 13 in a convincing win, while the Bears aren’t on top of the league, and haven’t been for some time, the win showed a lot of good work coming out from the Chargers.
The Jets vs Giants game of the previous week was not so clean. In what was described as a game ‘given away’ by the Giants, the Jets were able to pull themselves together and push over the line into overtime and then clinch the game up in a pretty impressive series of plays. But despite how impressive those final moments were, they were preceded by 59 minutes of poor plays and a shutdown offense.
Strength vs strength
The upcoming match between the Jets and Chargers should be interesting for a couple of reasons, one of which is that both teams have their main strength this season focused on an opposing element of play. The Chargers have a pretty tight offensive side, Justin Herbert has 34 games with at least two touchdown passes and he combines very nicely and often with Austin Ekeler who hit 30 touchdown receptions last week.
This stellar offense will be going up against the Jets more than capable defensive line including Carl Lawson, John Franklin-Myers and Quinnen Williams to name a couple.
Unfortunately for both sides, the other side of their coins are not quite as shiny. The Chargers’ defense is nothing to write home about, not if you want to say something nice, going into their last game against the Bears, the Chargers’ defense was ranked 31st overall in the entire league.
They might get lucky however, as the Jets offense is in a pretty similar state, almost doing more harm to themselves than good in their last game. There is a danger here for the Chargers. If the Jets’ offense gets going and has a big night at the office, they have shown that they can be very capable, just not consistently.
Rodgers-watch
As is tradition this season, Jets fans are eagerly awaiting news of their star quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who has played just shy of 2 minutes for the Jets this season despite costing them a couple of draft pick trades and $75m across two years. The star was injured right at the beginning of the Jets’ opening night game against the Bills and has been in recovery for a torn Achilles since.
Surprisingly, Rodgers is seemingly a star at recovering from injuries as well as on the football field, because he is smashing the average projected recovery time for an Achilles, which is normally 6 months at minimum and not even 2 months after being injured he was testing his limits and throwing some passes around in the pre-game warm-up before the Jets game against the Giants last week.
There is very little chance that Rodgers will play in the upcoming game against the Chargers, but there is hope that the star might make the last few regular season games this year.
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