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Here is an obvious statement, teams get the ball off quicker when they are down. Seems straight forward and obvious, but you'd be surprised how many teams fail to successfully run the hurry up offense and how many teams are ill-prepared to run it. I was watching a game yesterday where a team was down (I really can't remember who it was), and after completing a first down they walked to the line and must have taken 35 seconds off the clock in total.
When the Jets were down by two possessions, we moved to the hurry-up where we obviously had an enormous amount of success.
Well, I think we started pushing the tempo a little bit and that was helpful for us. The drive that (Eric Decker) got real involved, we were kind of on the ball and going. They had a hard time coming up with answers for that just with the way that we were going faster and pushing the tempo.
It was very noticeable yesterday, which made me wonder how quickly the Jets move from one play to the next when we're behind by 7 points or more, in comparison to the rest of the league.
The Jets take 22.54 seconds on average between ending one play and getting another play off when trailing by 7 points or more. That number is good for the 4th quickest in the NFL, behind only the Eagles, Texans and Jaguars.
Ryan was asked why the Jets didn't use it more if they were so successful with it, the up-tempo system and his answer was quite interesting:
Yeah, we've done it a little bit. I think we've been fairly successful, especially at the end of the half in terms of up-tempo stuff, with that, you just have to be able to get first downs. In terms of sustaining drives and all of that, we've the done the up-tempo a little bit and have not been able to sustain drives and then you're just putting your defense in a bad situation where they aren't getting much time to take a breather on the bench. It's something we always have, it's something we can always go to, but not necessarily something that we want to live in.