Week 3 of the relatively new NFL 2024 season gets going at the MetLife Stadium as the Thursday Night Football is an all-AFC East dust up between two sides who are 1-1 for the year as the New York Jets host the New England Patriots.
The Jets were well beaten in their opening match but recovered to level their ledger last week while the Patriots have done things the other way around. One of these sides will go 2-1 and have a platform to push on from.
New York Jets
The New York Jets didn’t have quite the hype going into this season that they did the last one, largely because this time there were questions about how Aaron Rodgers would come back after effectively an entire season out of the game given that he isn’t getting any younger, but they are still expected to be an effective side. That certainly wasn’t the case in their opening match in San Francisco but they were much more on it in Tennessee at the weekend and now they play their first home game with something to build from.
The real surprise in that opening match in San Francisco was how quickly the defence was exposed and then gassed but it was week one and that was as much down to the offense being unable to establish many drives as anything else. The offense got the job done much more in Tennessee last weekend and as a result of that the defence looked everything we expect it to be. They now need to show what they have got on home soil against a potentially weak division rival.
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New England Patriots
I think it is fair to say that heading into the season the New England Patriots were written off in most quarters. They were the bookmakers’ favourites to finish with the worst record and there wasn’t a whole lot of optimism around them at all. That was largely down to the fact Bill Belichick has departed but it should be noted that the Patriots were a fading force before then so it wasn’t an entirely unjustified tag that they were given.
The Patriots’ personnel clearly took issue with that though because they stunned the Cincinnati Bengals on the road in their opening game and only went down to the Seattle Seahawks in overtime last week. While they have only scored 16 and 20 points in the two matches that is still an encouraging return because generally the defence has held up pretty well. Both sides of the ball will be tested here but this is a primetime clash where they can show everyone they were written off too soon.
Betting
Regular readers will know that I’m not a massive fan of betting too deeply on these Thursday night games because of the short turnaround hugely impacting the play that we see. To be fair to the Patriots, the travelling which can be an issue on the Thursday games won’t impact them as it is a relatively short journey compared to some but they still have to play on a short week having had to go through overtime at the weekend and that isn’t an easy task.
That makes me think that the New York Jets defence, particularly their pass rush, is going to have a field day here, especially if the Jets have the early lead like they will be expected to have. The Patriots offensive line is severely dinged up with starting left guard and left tackle expected to miss the match and a Jets defence which has seven sacks on the season already could get home at will. You would imagine there will be a lot of blitzing downs for the Jets to get home here against a quarterback who isn’t likely to move around too much. Cincinnati and Seattle sacked Brissett three times and I’ve got to think the Jets will get at least that many with what is left of the Patriots’ offensive line likely to gas on the short week.
Tips
Back New York Jets – Over 2.5 sacks for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Bet365
