Less than an hour after the Jets beat the Titans in Nashville on Sunday, the final players were getting changed in the visitors' locker room at Nissan Stadium.
Among them were receiver Allen Lazard and running back Breece Hall.
At one point, Lazard asked Hall what “grade” he would give the offense in the game, and both agreed it was a “C” or “C-plus” game for the offense, despite the Jets scoring three touchdowns.
“We missed a lot of plays,” Lazard said, “and I say that with all the respect for the Titans. I thought they played a phenomenal game defensively. They had a great game plan, they pressured us and they stopped the run very well.”
“We were very fortunate to come out of this with a win because it could have been a different outcome.”
Arguably, it could have been the other way around, with the Titans forcing the Jets into a turnover thanks to an ill-advised lateral pass by Will Revis in the red zone when Tennessee was already leading 7-0.
The Jets' offense enters their home opener against the Patriots on Thursday night at MetLife Stadium after getting off to slow starts in each of their first two games.
The Jets weathered a sluggish start last week thanks to the Titans' offensive incompetence, but a sluggish start also led to them getting swept by the 49ers in their season opener.
In the loss at San Francisco, the Jets failed to score on three straight attempts from their first five attempts, and then Hall fumbled in their own half.
In the Tennessee win, the Jets started the game with two third downs and three consecutive punts.
Jets wide receiver Garrett Wilson said ahead of Thursday's game that it's “super important” for the offense to get off to a fast start.
“Once we get going, if we get off to a good start, I think it will fuel us for the rest of the game,” Wilson said. “That's something we're working on. We want to go in with the mindset that we want to score first, we want to score on the first drive. We've got to have that mindset. We've got to go out there and execute on that.”
Part of that is down to the team getting their offensive weapons acclimated to the speed of the game after quarterback Aaron Rodgers missed all of last season.
He, like Lazard and Hall, was lukewarm about the offensive performance after the Titans game.
One glaring issue is that Rodgers has yet to fully connect with his top skill position players, especially Wilson, who entered Thursday night's game with 10 receptions for 117 yards.
Those are modest numbers by Wilson's standards: After 95 catches for 1,042 yards last season and 83 catches for 1,103 yards as a rookie, he's projected to have 85 catches for 986 yards this year.
Tight end Tyler Conklin has curiously seen his involvement in the passing game decrease despite being a solid pass-catching player the past two seasons.
Conklin had just two catches for 16 yards in two games on Thursday, but had 61 catches for 621 yards last season and 58 catches for 552 yards and four touchdowns in 2022.
“I'm not worried about it,” Conklin told The Post about the team's poor performance so far. “It happens. I'm not worried about who's going to get the ball.”
Two games is certainly a small sample size to consider, too small to look at trends, but if Rodgers is healthy, he could help turn Wilson into a star, and there was hope that Conklin would also have a big impact given his reliability as a pass-catching player.
“We need to get our play into the mid-60s, closer to 70s so we can throw the ball more,” Rodgers said. “More opportunities mean more opportunities down the field, more yards, more points.”
