JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — New York Jets quarterback Sam Darnold endured the equivalent of a root canal Thursday afternoon, when his weekly press conference turned into a detailed debriefing about the worst game of his professional career: Monday night’s loss to the Patriots.

Darnold took the interrogation in stride, but couldn’t help but laugh when about nine minutes into his weekly press conference he finally was asked about the Jets’ next opponent.

“A Jacksonville question,” Darnold said, breaking into a wide grin and raising his eyebrows.

It was the perfect segue to Sunday’s game against the Jaguars. What happened against the Patriots won’t be forgotten. But what matters is what comes next.

“For me, it’s really about continuing to learn from my mistakes I made in the Pats game,” Darnold said. “Learn from it and have those mistakes not pop up again.”

With that in mind, Sunday’s game against the Jaguars is one of the most important in Darnold’s career.

He has a chance to immediately move past his five-turnover performance against the Patriots. Or his struggles could start to spiral, ratcheting up the pressure on the young quarterback and coach Adam Gase.

It starts with Darnold making better decisions. There were several times in the loss to the Patriots where Darnold would have been wise to take a sack, but instead he threw it up for grabs. He’s the only one to blame for that.

“It's something that we talked about,” Gase said. “About when to just go down, when you can try to make a throw. It's a work in progress for us. It's one of those things that it's not a problem till it's a problem.”

That’s a problem the Jets have to get ironed out immediately, and we’ll likely get some answers against the Jaguars’ strong defensive front — led by Calais Campbell — which should put Darnold under pressure.

But even though Darnold was the face of the Jets’ struggles against the Patriots, he was hardly the only reason for the loss. Everyone shares the blame.

Gase took too long to realize that Darnold was not seeing the field well, and had been flustered by the Patriots. He never was able to make a meaningful adjustment that allowed the offense to find success.

Receivers didn’t seem to recognize the pressure that Darnold was under, and didn’t get themselves open quickly enough.

And the offensive line was a mess, again. There were several plays in which multiple Jets’ linemen were trying to block defenders who weren’t even rushing, while others came free to take a run at Darnold.

“It wasn’t all on Sam,” Gase said. “We’ve got to do a better job of putting him in better situations, making plays for him, protecting him a little so he’s not under duress — which I feel like he was. Obviously, I’m sure he made some decisions that he’d like to take back. But it definitely wasn’t all on Sam.”

Jamison Crowder said that even though it didn’t look like it, there were opportunities for the players on offense to make plays that could have changed the momentum of the game.

“Just to boost his confidence and the confidence of the whole offense,” Crowder said. “I mean, it sounds simple, but that’s kind of what it comes down to, just being able to go out there and make plays for him when things are not going as planned.”

In the end, though, Darnold will have the biggest impact on the team’s success because he’s making the most impactful decisions. And that’s another reason Sunday’s game is so important: when a player struggles the way Darnold did against the Patriots, other teams are going to try to exploit the weakness and beat him the same way.

“You have to learn from your mistakes and the things that we did wrong,” offensive coordinator and quarterback coach Dowell Loggains said. “When you put something on tape in this league, each opponent, until you fix it, is going to attack it and we have to clean that stuff up.”

If the Jets’ coaching staff, offensive players and Darnold can put together a strong offensive performance against the Jaguars, the Patriots disaster may go down as an unfortunate blip in Darnold’s career. But the Jets’ offense struggles again, the hole is only going to get deeper for Darnold and everyone else.

Andy Vasquez is the Jets beat writer for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to all Jets analysis, news, trades and more, please subscribe today and download our app.

Email: vasqueza@northjersey.com Twitter: @andy_vasquez

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