Jets’ training camp scrimmage devolves into sloppy mess

The Jets’ green and white scrimmage — the closest they’ve gotten to a game situation this training camp — looked and sounded eerily similar to too many real games in recent years. 

A floundering offense. Penalty after penalty. Groans from the fans. 

They scrimmaged — with full tackling other than on the quarterback — for the majority of Saturday’s practice. And it was their sloppiest showing since camp started. They committed 12 penalties, the vast majority of which came on offense. A plethora of them were pre-snap flags as well. 

The penalties stalled multiple offensive drives. 

“There were a lot of things we gotta clean up,” head coach Aaron Glenn said after practice. “The one thing that I’m sure everybody saw were the penalties. I’m glad we had the refs out there, because that’s one thing we want to hit. We want to make sure we hit those hard. I want them to ref it just like it was a game. I thought they did a good job with that. 

“There’s no excuses, our players understand that. We know penalties, they’re discipline issues. We gotta make sure we’re more disciplined in that aspect on both sides of the ball. We will get those cleaned up, I promise you that, but there’s a lot of work to do.” 

The Jets led the NFL in both penalty yardage and total penalties committed last year. Glenn has preached discipline endlessly and made cutting down on flags his No. 1 point of emphasis since camp started. 

But his messaging has not yet translated into actual, on-field results. 

“We continue to emphasize it, and then we watch it as a group and we try to understand exactly — why did it happen? Some of the holding calls, those can be technical issues,” Glenn said. “As a coach, we try to fix those issues. Those are competitive penalties, for the most part. I’m not saying they’re OK, I’m not, but the thing is we have to coach the technique on that to make sure those don’t happen again. And our players have to understand that. 

“We had some great runs on a number of those penalties, and it doesn’t matter now, because they bring them back. We gotta do a good job of coaching, and the players gotta do a good job of accepting the coaching and going out there and executing.” 

For his own part, quarterback Justin Fields struggled mightily. He completed just 2 of 10 passes during the scrimmage. A delay-of-game penalty also fell on his shoulders. 

“There are some balls that we have to catch, that he threw to some guys,” Glenn said. “And there are some throws that he’s gotta make, too, that were out there.” 

The running game was one silver lining. Fields ran for a touchdown. Breece Hall, Braelon Allen and Isaiah Davis all flashed at different points. 

“I will say this, and I want to make sure this is clear, I thought our running backs today did a hell of a job,” Glenn said. “A hell of a job. And it’s expected. … I expect a number of good things from those guys, and I want to make sure that those guys get praise for what they did today.” 

But solid running back play won’t make up for so much dysfunction around them. Not even close. 

Saturday served as a bad case of déjà vu.