Jets Continue To Sell Alternate Reality In Post-Mortem Press Conferences
2024 is expected to be a year of unabashed disinformation. There will be people who will try to convince a flock that two plus two equals five and others who will tell you to not believe what you’re seeing with your own eyes.
The Jets haven’t wasted any time in employing this tactic, as General Manager Joe Douglas and Head Coach Robert Saleh took to the podium on Monday to spin yet another wasted season of football. Not that they needed to, because both of them were stunningly given votes of confidence in advance of Sunday’s 17-3 victory in the season finale at New England despite their glaringly undistinguished records.
Still, they weren’t really addressing the assembled media on Monday. No, their comments were for an audience of one: Owner Woody Johnson.
That’s why you heard things like Saleh saying, “It felt good to take that next step this year,” and Douglas’ quote on how the Jets are “really not as far away as it looks.”
Huh?
To be fair, Saleh also called the season “frustrating” and Douglas acknowledged that his “record is not good enough.” If only they left it at that. Their attempts to snow fans through their conduits in the media were embarrassing.
Let’s start by examining their premise that this Jets season was an improvement over the 2022 campaign, even if the won/loss record (7-10) was the exact same thanks to similarly lengthy losing streaks (six straight to end last season and five consecutive mid-season defeats that knocked them out of the 2023 playoff race).
I understand that the offense would have performed better with Aaron Rodgers calling signals, but the fact is that his Achilles rupture on the season’s fourth snap left the team with the same level of quarterback play as last season. Zach Wilson, one year older, actually started more games this season than in 2022, leaving fewer reps for those lower on the Jets depth chart. And Gang Green had running back Breece Hall and wide receiver Garrett Wilson, their top skill position weapons, healthy for all 17 games, as opposed to last season when Hall went down with a torn ACL in in Week 7.
Yet the Jets produced 1.6 fewer points per game this season (including defense and special teams scores) while finishing last in third down conversions, red zone touchdown percentage, and expected points added per play—all with worse numbers than in 2022. This group was heading into unchartered territories in terms of breaking franchise and league records of ineptitude before a couple of good outings against Houston and Washington saved them from the ignominy.
You want to blame injuries for this as well, specifically those on the offensive line? Well, there certainly were some devastating hits this season that required some semipro level replacements to see live action, but has everyone forgotten the names that impersonated NFL linemen last year, like Cedric Ogbuehi, Dan Feeney, Mike Remmers, and a washed Laurent Duvernay-Tardif? Many of the leakages this season were caused by tackle Mekhi Becton, Douglas’ No. 11 overall pick in the 2020 NFL Draft who suited up for a career high 16 games this season, and guard Laken Tomlinson, who signed a massive free agent contract during the 2022 offseason and played every snap, many of them poorly.
As for New York’s defense, a case can be made that it had no chance of improving on last season’s top-five metrics given the slate of top NFL QBs it had to face in comparison to the year prior. While the Jets actually rose in the rankings in yards and EPA per play allowed categories and forced 11 more turnovers, they surrendered 2.3 more points per game than during 2022, dropping eight places. At best, it was a wash.
But the facts don’t really matter anyway. Douglas and Saleh only needed to maintain the impression that, oh, if only Rodgers hadn’t gotten hurt, this would have been a championship contender. The record couldn’t have possibly be deserved due to whiffed Draft picks/free agents or terrible coaching structure/decisions, right? And Johnson has obviously been hoodwinked.
For while other NFL franchises that fell flat on their faces this season have been holding their people accountable (even Mike Vrabel, whose Titans squads went 54-45 and qualified for the playoffs in three consecutive seasons before a pair of sub-.500 campaigns with garbage quarterbacks, was let go on Tuesday), the Jets are giving Douglas and Saleh a fifth and fourth season, respectively. (Note: I don’t count the 2019 season in Douglas’ record since he was hired in June, after free agency and the Draft.)
That’s almost unprecedented. According to my data scientist son Jack, there have been 120 new head coaching hires since 2000, of which 22 of them posted a cumulative minus-200 point differential within their first three seasons. Saleh is only the third of those to get a fourth season. None got a fifth. From Saleh’s “coach class” in 2021, Atlanta’s Arthur Smith became on Monday the fourth of the seven to receive a pink slip. The survivors are Philadelphia’s Nick Sirianni, who reached the 2023 Super Bowl, Dan Campbell of the NFC North champion Lions, and Saleh. By me sparing Douglas that extra season, he got to leap Matt Millen for the dubious honor of worst point differential among the 103 GM hires since 2000.
It must be surreal to live in the universe of an NFL owner. Maybe like a combination of “Barbie” and “The Lego Movie”, where “Everything is Wonderful.” How else could one explain how Johnson is so blinded by reality?
Then again, maybe he just doesn’t want to do the work. The hiring process to build a successful NFL organization can be stressful. And Johnson might not know the right people to trust to get recommendations. His brother Christopher evidently listened to Peyton Manning while Woody was on leave as Ambassador to the United Kingdom and that’s how we ended up with two miserable seasons of Head Coach Adam Gase.
It’s much easier for Johnson to buy into what Douglas and Saleh are selling, even if it’s in an alternate state of truth. Welcome to 2024.