Breece Hall took a handoff on the first play of the fourth quarter, sliced through the line of scrimmage, reached the end zone for a 59-yard touchdown, then ran off the field and straight up the tunnel. He returned a few moments later, trotting back to join his Jets teammates.
He should have kept right on going.
On a day when Hall reached 1,000 rushing yards for the first time in his four-year career, when he gave the Jets the only spark of a play they could point toward in a 42-10 loss to the Patriots, as he gets ready to cap this season as the last viable offensive piece in place for a team that is reduced to contemplating a fourth quarterback change in a month and whose own coach called them “stagnant,” it should have become very clear to him on Sunday that his best chance to truly succeed is elsewhere.
We’ve spent most of this calendar year asking how the Jets would handle Hall in this final season of his contract. The year began with speculation about whether he would be swapped for picks as early as April’s draft, followed by questions about whether they would trade him along with the other stars they shipped out at the deadline in early November, and finally — once it became clear he was here for the rest of the season — conjecture about whether he had done enough to earn a new contract once free agency arrives in a few short months.
Few have really examined the dynamic from the other direction, though — from Hall’s point of view.
The Jets are getting to the point that they need to start selling themselves to Hall. It hasn’t been much of a pitch.
Just as he crossed that milestone threshold, crossed that goal line and proved to the Jets he definitely is worth a new deal as part of their future plans, Hall finally gets to have a say in his own whereabouts. He has said all along that he wants to be with the Jets, but he really didn’t have a choice until now. It’s fair to wonder if he wants to return to an organization that again demonstrated the kind of messy state it is in.
Would you?
“Not happy,” Hall said of the lopsided result of the game in which he achieved his career high in single-season rushing yards. “But happy I did it. Been through a lot this season, been through a lot the last four years. It is what it is.”
Hall went on to say that he was disappointed it took as long as it did for him to get there. He wound up with 111 rushing yards on Sunday, his first time with at least 100 since the first win of the year in Week 8 in Cincinnati. In the three games before Sunday’s, he had averaged 40 yards a game.
“I feel like I should have gotten to that mark a few weeks ago, but there has been a lot going on here,” he said. “It’s been tough.”
Two years ago, Hall came up six yards shy of 1,000 when he ran for 178 and a touchdown in the regular-season finale against the Patriots in Foxborough. The Jets won that game — Bill Belichick’s last for New England — and while there was disappointment in the team’s inability to get Hall that last half-dozen, there certainly was more organizational optimism then than there is now.
Back then they were expecting Aaron Rodgers to return the following year, figuring on coach Robert Saleh putting together another championship-caliber defense, and, finally having slain the dragon that had tortured them all those years, thought they saw an opening in the AFC East.
Two years later, the Patriots are back on top with a new coach and quarterback with whom to taunt the Jets, and the future in Florham Park is about as low and lousy and uncertain as it has seemed to be in a long while. They have no quarterback, no proven head coach, no defensive game-changer. They have draft picks and cap space, but is that enough to convince Hall to stick around?
Even the Jets are asking themselves that.
“He wants wins more than the 1,000 right now,” coach Aaron Glenn said. “A good accomplishment for him, but we have a lot of work to do in general for me to sit here and say I am gung-ho about 1,000 yards right now.”
In a year otherwise devoid of much celebration, center Josh Myers said he was glad to have Hall get to 1,000 yards and was shocked to learn that he hadn’t reached the milestone earlier in his career.
“You just try to be as positive as you can and find stuff to build off of right now,” Myers said. “I think you are happy for him and you hope that Breece gets rewarded for it.”
A just reward might be playing somewhere else next season on a team that can properly utilize his abilities and convert them into a playoff run. Even a winning record would do at this point for Hall, who hasn’t come close to one in his pro career. The lifespan of an NFL running back is short, and dawdling with another Jets rebuild probably isn’t the best career advice for him.
Hall entered Sunday’s game needing 46 yards to become the first Jet to reach 1,000 yards since Chris Ivory in 2015, and for a while it seemed as if he might not make it. Then he took a handoff from quarterback Brady Cook — bumping into him in the process — and turned it into a gain of 19 that brought him to 26 on the day. At halftime he was at 30.
Late in the third quarter, he had a 9-yard gain that left him three shy of the benchmark. Then, with about a minute and a half left in the third, he ran up the middle for 7 to give him 50 in the game and 1,004 on the season.
Even that was precarious, though, as he was hit behind the line of scrimmage on the next two plays while managing to gain 1 and 2 yards, respectively.
Then he broke the 59-yarder for the touchdown and the millennial mark finally felt secure.
Hall wound up leaving the game with a knee injury in the fourth quarter after being tackled on the Patriots’ sideline. He gave a terse “no comment” when asked about being in the game that late, but he said he would be fine and didn’t think he would need testing on it.
Whether he plays next week against the Bills remains to be seen — the rest of the Jets’ running backs are dealing with their own injuries, and backup Isaiah Davis suffered a concussion on a special teams tackle — so Sunday might wind up being Hall’s final game of the year for the Jets.
Maybe his final Jets game ever.
“It’s a blessing and I am blessed to be in this position, so it’s cool,” he finally conceded of his achievement.
Blessed to be a Jet, though? Can anyone really say that at this point?
That tunnel that leads out of MetLife Stadium has to be looking more and more appealing.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday’s Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
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