George Fant has been battling a left knee injury all season, but it knocked him out of the game on Sunday against the Bengals.
The knee injury kept Fant from practicing Wednesday and limited him on Thursday and Friday, but he decided to try to play through it. He ended up having a tough day against Bengals pass rusher Trey Hendrickson and left the game in the third quarter, after allowing Hendrickson a strip-sack.
“He’s a good player. It’s tough going against anybody right now,” Fant told The Post. “Right now, I’m just working my butt off trying to get back healthy, back to 100 percent.”
When asked if he thought he needed to take a week off, Fant said, “I don’t know.”
The Jets already are hurting at tackle and having a hurting Fant — or no Fant at all — is another blow to the shaky offensive line. The Jets lost Mekhi Becton to a knee injury in August and then Duane Brown, signed as Becton’s replacement, injured his shoulder before Week 1 and is on injured reserve until at least Week 5.
The Jets tackles late in Sunday’s 27-12 loss to the Bengals were Conor McDermott and rookie Max Mitchell. The Jets struggled to protect quarterback Joe Flacco, allowing nine quarterback hits and four sacks.
“Honestly, we made some plays but they made some plays, too,” Fant said. “They just have some things in their scheme that they did to beat blocks, and they made a couple more plays, and that was pretty much the game.”
One bright spot for the Jets on Sunday was the play of rookie CB Sauce Gardner. The No. 4 overall pick held his own against Bengals star Ja’Marr Chase and broke up two passes. Gardner was not exclusively covering Chase, but the two players faced off many times in the game.
“I was just thinking about going against Ja’Marr Chase the whole time,” Gardner said. “Everybody says he’s the best; that’s what I was ready for. He didn’t have any catches, so I feel like I did what I had to do. But it’s not about me; it’s about the team, so we have to be able to do what we have to do as a collective team. We have to be able to communicate and execute on defense.”
LB Quincy Williams suffered a left ankle injury and it looked bad. Williams was carted off with an air cast on his left leg after making a tackle in the third quarter. Jets coach Robert Saleh said Williams would be evaluated on Monday.
