Jets defense ‘maybe got too comfortable’: Sauce Gardner

Jets star cornerback Sauce Gardner watched Sunday’s loss to the Dolphins from the sideline.

Gardner missed the game with a hamstring injury.

But he saw the familiar sight of the Jets defense collapsing down the stretch in another loss.

Gardner said Wednesday the Jets defense may have entered this season “too comfortable” because of the offense’s star power with Aaron Rodgers, Garrett Wilson, Breece Hall and the midseason addition of Davante Adams.

“Maybe we got too comfortable having all those guys, all those playmakers on offense to where it’s like we’re not filling up our end of the bargain,” Gardner said. “We’ve got to be better. We’ve got to be better on defense.”

The Jets defense gave up fourth-quarter leads in each of the last three games — all losses.

The assumption entering this season was that the defense would be as good as it has been in the last two years, and with a healthy Rodgers, the Jets would be playoff-bound. Instead, the defense has taken a major step back.

“I know if we had this offense now and we played nearly as good defense as we played the last couple of years, we’d be chilling right now,” Gardner said. “It’s not where I imagined we was going to be this year.”

Gardner said the defense is trying to recapture the mentality they had in the last two years.

“We’ve got to play the way we’ve been playing the last couple of years where it’s like we’re not really expecting the offense to score that many points, like we’ve got to win the game ourselves,” Gardner said.

Gardner said he is fully healthy and will play Sunday in Jacksonville.

The Jets placed special teams ace Irv Charles on injured reserve after he tore his ACL in Sunday’s loss in Miami.

The team signed CB Jaylin Simpson off of the Colts practice squad. Simpson was a fourth-round pick in the spring.

Hall is still struggling with his knee injury, interim coach Jeff Ulbrich said.

“It is a thing that maybe it is not improving as much as he would like at this point, so we will see how it goes this week,” Ulbrich said.

The Jets did not practice on Wednesday. Instead, they had a walk-through.

The injury report is an estimation of what the players would have done in a practice.

Hall (knee), RB Kene Nwangwu (hand), DE Haason Reddick (illness) and RG Alijah Vera-Tucker (ankle) did not practice. CB Brandin Echols (shoulder), RT Morgan Moses (wrist), G Xavier Newman (groin) and CB D.J. Reed (groin) were limited.