The New York Jets stumbled their third straight loss in Week 9 after a disappointing 13-6 loss on the road to the Miami Dolphins.
It saw another discouraging outing from rookie quarterback Sam Darnold complete 21-of-39 passes for 229 yards with a career-worst four interception to zero touchdown passes. With a night to reflect and review his performance, Darnold was quite critical of his play in the contest stating that he was flat out “playing stupid,” according to Manish Mehta of the New York Daily News.
Sam Darnold's main takeaway after watching tape of yesterday's performance: "It's just not playing to the best of my ability and quite frankly just playing stupid. I thought I played stupid football yesterday. I just to be better. I know that. Coaches know it. Everyone knows it"
— Manish Mehta (@MMehtaSports) November 5, 2018
It was a frustrating performance for Darnold that saw him struggle to make accurate throws as three of the interceptions that he made were directly at defenders. This included a game-changing pick-six that was intercepted on a ball thrown in tight coverage that he had no business throwing at that juncture. In fact, it could have been worse as there were a couple of balls dropped by defenders that could have easily been picked off.
Darnold had continued to put his team in a challenging spot with each turnover, but they were able to continue to stay in the game and he had an opportunity to tie it up late in the fourth quarter, but couldn't move the ball down the field. Many of these throws likely came with him believing that he could fit it in a tight window, but that came with him either being inaccurate or just simply making a questionable decision.
It is clear that Darnold has some promising talent on the field to become a potential star in the league, but it will see him continue to experience his bumps along the way in his rookie campaign. This won't be the last time that he is put in this situation with him committing turnovers, which is something that the Jets are well aware of being the case. In essence, there are more growing pains ahead.