The other distinction was a sudden development and would have put him on a pedestal with the likes of the top pass-rushers in Green & White annals. After the fourth-year pro got his third sack of Deshaun Watson on the first series of the third quarter, he needed only one more to tie the franchise mark of four sacks in a game, officially (since 1981) done three times in the early Eighties by Mark Gastineau and equaled only once since, by John Abraham in 2003.
“Goose” almost got it, too, but he arrived just a little too late and LB Brandon Copeland did the honors.
“If I had turned the corner, I would’ve gotten that one, but it was good to see ‘Cope’ get that,” he said. “And there were other dudes on the other side who were doing a good job of flushing him in to me, so I kind of owed them one.”
Teamwise, the Jets had six sacks of Watson, their most in a game since taking down then-Bills QB Tyrod Taylor seven times at MetLife last year, and the 55 yards of sack losses were the first in a game since sacking Miami passers six times for 60 yards in 2009.
But the 9-4 Texans have baked Watson’s sackability into their cake — he was the second-most-sacked QB in the NFL heading into the game. What the Jets needed was a stop on Houston’s final TD drive to retake the lead, 26-22. And despite holding Houston to 47 rushing yards, 286 total yards, 15 first downs and 1-for-9 on third downs, they didn’t have that answer.
“They were in some bigger personnel groupings on that last drive, they had some extra dudes staying in blocking, so it was a little bit harder to get back there to the quarterback,” Anderson explained. “But we have to continue to stay after it, go out and execute and we didn’t do that. As a defense, if we want to go the places we want to, we’ve got to step up and get a stop in that situation.”
