The bad news: The New York Jets once again scored only 10 points; they lost their second game in a row; and the quarterback they picked second overall two years ago, who has been benched what feels like nine distinct times, played so poorly that the team's only Super Bowl-winning quarterback is publicly calling for his head. The good news: Sauce Gardner and Mac Jones are engaging in a visually inscrutable, genitally questionable beef that is far more interesting than the final scores of any football that took place this past weekend.
The trouble started on a third-and-1 early in the fourth quarter, when Jones tried to run for it but got stonewalled by Jets safety Jordan Whitehead and eventually body-slammed by C.J. Mosley. Jones stood up after the play and made ... some sort of contact ... with some part of Gardner's body ... to which Gardner responded by looking down for a brief moment, then shoving Jones to the ground again. Gardner himself posted a hideous 144p video of his computer alleging to show Jones's penile crimes, though it's hilariously unclear what actually happened once Jones stood up.
After the game, Gardner said Jones tried to get Gardner to help him up, and his refusal may have inspired Jones to strike. "I just moved his hand out of the way," he said. "He got up and then came up to me like ‘Good job.’ While he was saying that, he hit me in my private parts. I didn’t react like I really wanted to. I definitely wasn’t expecting that. First time for everything I guess." He later added, "He’s trying to prevent me from having kids in the future." The NFL is reportedly investigating the groin infraction.
The Athletic's Dianna Russini tried to clarify the scuffle with a "closer view" sent by a league source, and though it is almost as grainy as Gardner's video, there is a tiny window where you can see Jones's right hand making some sort of contact with Gardner. This is no smoking gun, though you can see that there was probably contact. For his part, Jones offered a wishy-washy denial, only claiming that he didn't mean to do anything wrong, not that he did nothing wrong. "Sauce is one of the best corners in the NFL," he said on the radio. "I have a lot of respect for him. On that play, nothing was intentional. I just got up and went back to the huddle, and that’s it."
Mac-heads and Mac-haters alike know that this isn't the first time Jones has been called out by an opposing cornerback for dirty play, as then-Bengal Eli Apple accused him of diving at his knees late last season. (He was fined $13,367 for the hit.) Jones was asked about the incidents in conjunction with one another, and he said he simply had that dog in him. "I definitely care about football a lot and this game means a lot to me and it means a lot to a lot of other guys that I play with so I hope that they can see that," he said, clarifying nothing.
