Jets running back Breece Hall sprinted across the team’s logo at midfield and blazed a path down the right sideline into the end zone on Sunday afternoon at MetLife Stadium. As his teammates celebrated the only bright moment on an all-time bleak day for this woebegone franchise, Hall jogged into the darkness of the tunnel.
He emerged a moment later, mobbed by his teammates after putting an exclamation point on his own historic day – moments earlier he became the first Jet since 2015 to surpass the 1,000-yard mark in more than a decade.
Now it’s on the Jets to make sure he doesn’t disappear this offseason.
It was hard to find a lot that mattered for the Jets as the Patriots pummeled them 42-10 to drop them to 3-13 on the season. They’re now almost assured to have a top five pick in next spring’s NFL Draft, where they’ll try to find the franchise quarterback they’ve been looking for since Joe Namath’s final game with the team nearly 50 years ago.
But it’s now clear that whoever they have at quarterback next year will be better off if Hall is alongside him in the backfield. That’s because what Hall has done this season, with him set to be a free agent, is truly remarkable.
The Jets have the NFL’s worst passing offense, by far. They have played the last four games with an undrafted rookie quarterback in Brady Cook, who is getting less effective with every start. And yet against defenses that know the Jets are going to hand the ball off to him, Hall has thrived.
He became the first Jets running back since Chris Ivory in 2015 to surpass the 1,000 yard mark on the ground (only the 19th time it has been done in the team’s 66-season history.
He has also racked up 350 yards in the passing game. Hall isn’t the best running back in the league. But he could be in a good offense. And that’s why the Jets should pay him this offseason, to give their next quarterback the best chance at success.
If Hall wasn’t there on Sunday the Jets very well might have been headed for their most lopsided loss in franchise history. Their worst loss was by 53 to the Patriots back in 1979. They were down 42-3 in the third quarter, and that mark seemed in jeopardy, when Hall took a seven-yard run to surpass the 1,000-yard mark.
Moments later, he streaked 59 yards to the end zone to give the Jets their only uplifting moment of the day.
Hall has been one of their only bright spots in this all-time bad season, and if the Jets want to get out of this rut they need to make sure that this wasn’t his last memorable moment in their uniform.