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The New York Jets have, once again, stolen the headlines of the NFL season despite not actually being a good football team.
After a 37-15 beatdown at the hands of the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday Night Football, the Jets find themselves in familiar territory at 2-5 with the season circling the drain before they can even really get going. What adds an extra pinch of salt to their wounds this year is that they’ve spent a whole lot of resources to be in this position and still can’t get any wins on the board. At best, this is a mediocre team with a high-level payroll. At worst, this is the worst Jets failure that tops the long list of recent failures for this franchise.
Aaron Rodgers has been a double-edged sword. On one hand, he’s comfortably the best quarterback they’ve had in recent memory. At times, his combination of rare throwing ability and two decades of NFL experience has the Jets passing game looking like they can be one of the best in the league if they could just get a bit more consistency from everyone.
On the other hand, he hasn’t been good enough in terms of what they need to go out and win a Super Bowl. As a whole, the Jets’ offense is just 20th in success rate (gaining 40% of yards to go on first down, 60% on second and 100% on third/fourth) and 22nd in expected points added per play (-0.06). That’s better than where they were last year, when they were arguably the worst offense in football, but being below average is an abject failure for the expectations coming into the season.
This offense has spent a top pick on Garrett Wilson, paid players like Allen Lazard and Mike Williams and recently traded a pick for future Hall of Famer Davante Adams. Yet they still can’t score points. Switching from Nate Hackett to Todd Downing as offensive play-callers seems to have helped running back Breece Hall get back to being one of the best offensive players in the league. Outside of him, the Jets offense has still just been mediocre at best. Tyron Smith and the offensive tackles have been shaky, but at least guard John Simpson has been a good player up to this point.
The biggest problem for this team moving forward is that the defense is just falling apart. Between injuries and the departure of head coach Robert Saleh, the Jets just haven’t been able to play effective defense. In the two weeks without Saleh running things, they rank 28th in expected points allowed per play on defense — for a defense that’s normally been a top-five unit week in and week out. That performance should improve throughout the season as they get healthier, but the biggest problem is that the defense is not good enough to buoy a flat offense and actually get some wins on the table.
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Furthermore, the Jets are now three games behind the Buffalo Bills, who who also currently hold a tiebreaker over them — and their next game against the Bills will be played on the road. There isn’t much time left to salvage the season, and it’s only going to get more difficult as they try to dig out of the hole they’ve put themselves in. Next week against New England should be a winnable game with how poorly the Patriots’ defense is playing, but at 2-5, no game can be considered a gimme. The Jets just haven’t played well enough to earn that expectation.
It’s still early enough in the season that a turnaround is possible, and they might have the top-end talent to actualize a rise in the standings. Still, the goal for these Jets was to compete for the Super Bowl, and now the realistic best-case scenario is going on a run and sneaking into the No. 6 or 7 seed in the playoffs. That’s a far fall from where they originally wanted to be.
Hey, at least Haason Reddick will be joining the team soon after ending his holdout with a new deal, which will give the defense a boost. The Jets will need every ounce of talent to roar back in the AFC standings and push for a playoff spot — just an unfathomably dismal outcome for a team with this many resources poured into it. This is the Jetsiest season that’s existed in quite some time.