On a night when the Jets started with their two young quarterbacks and didn’t get much done in their passing game, they relied on their young running backs to lead their team to a 15-12 road win over the Carolina Panthers on Saturday night.

“I thought our running back room as a whole ran the ball really, really hard, downhill and brutally,” head coach Robert Saleh said of his backfield, which didn’t have sideline spotter Breece Hall to use in the second game but got positive yardage from five backs plus the two QBs. “I’m excited to watch that video because there’s a lot to see.”

The stats weren’t exactly eye candy. The Jets totaled 117 rush yards on 28 carries, a solid but not mind-blowing 4.2 yards per carry. They managed seven first downs. The only run by a Jets back with double-digit yardage on the night was Israel Abanikanda’s 12-yard run.

On the other hand, the Jets secured the win with five field goals, four of them by Austin Seibert. And although the game was a little rough, the backs were not condemned to losses by tackles and excelled in the passing game with those 117 yards versus the 85 net yards that Andrew Peasley and Adrian Martinez put together.

Braelon Allen, the powerful fourth-round rookie, didn’t start against the Panthers – fifth-round rookie Isaiah Davis did – but still provided some muscle and movement on one of the game’s crucial drives.

“Braelon, he had a couple,” Saleh said of the 6-foot-1, 235-pound Wisconsin product. “It was third-and-5, third-and-6, and he had a big 4-yard run where he just moved the whole bunch. We picked him for a lot of reasons because he’s actually really good at route running out of the backfield, he’s really good in protection, we think he’s an all-around good back, a very powerful runner. And he shows that from start to finish.”