Almost everything went right for the Jets during their preseason opener.
New quarterback Justin Fields looked the part, leading the team 70 yards down the field before rushing in for a touchdown on his lone drive of the night.
The defense was great as well, forcing a pair of turnovers and recording four sacks, and they widely outgained the Packers in what ended as a commanding victory.
The lone negative on the night, though, was an issue that’s plagued New York throughout the early stages of training camp practices.
In their first real game action under head coach Aaron Glenn, the squad committed a total of 10 penalties for 91 yards against — which is nearly half of what Green Bay gained as a team on the night.
While some of them were technical issues others were undisciplined mistakes, such as Michael Clemons taking an unnecessary roughness penalty when he got into a fight with Packers offense lineman Zach Tom.
Clemons was immediately pulled to the sidelined and Glenn got directly into his face, clearly voicing his displeasure with the defensive lineman.
“I have to address that, that'll be between me and them,” Glenn said afterwards.
That was just the first of three unnecessary roughness penalties called against Gang Green — the last two were on late hits on the sidelines by Eric Watts and Marcelino McCray-Ball later in the first half.
The Jets also had an impressive 73-yard touchdown run from rookie Donovan Edwards wiped off the board early in the fourth quarter due to a holding penalty on Liam Fornadel.
“Everything we did in the game was our brand of football,” Glenn said. “The only thing that wasn’t is the amount of penalties we had — some of them were undisciplined penalties, so we have to clean those up.”
They’ll look to get things right as they face off with the crosstown rival Giants in a pair of joint practices this week ahead of their second preseason meeting.
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