No-Show Jets Showed Who They Are In Do-Or-Die Loss In Seattle
What a waste of a football season.
The Jets (7-9), who dropped their fifth straight game and were officially and mercifully eliminated from the postseason by a no-show 23-6 loss in Seattle on Sunday, are only marginally closer to what a competitive team looks like than they were after last season’s 4-13 debacle. Chalk their early season success to a mirage, fueled more by the luck of the draw in facing a slew of bad/backup quarterbacks save for one inspiring win over Josh Allen and the Bills in Week 9 than by any massive influx in talent, as some have previously opined.
Since that outlier, Gang Green has shown us who they are, which is far from good enough. The offense will never be able to carry the team until the organization obtains a legitimate quarterback and the defense—the much vaunted, overhyped defense—has too many holes that merely competent opponents know how to exploit. Even the special teams let the Jets down on Sunday, with gaffes from the punter, kicker, and returner that contributed to the defeat.
Who’s this team’s core? Their best player (Quinnen Williams) is an interior defensive lineman who they’ll have to overpay either this offseason or next. As for premium positions, wide receiver Garrett Wilson and cornerback Ahmad “Sauce” Gardner have been very good players as rookies while cornerback D.J. Reed has been one of General Manager Joe Douglas’ best free agent pickups, but there’s not much behind them. Too many other high draft picks and hired guns from the past couple of offseasons (quarterback Zach Wilson, tackle Mekhi Becton, wide receiver Corey Davis, guard Laken Tomlinson, et al) haven’t delivered as promised.
Overseeing it all is another Head Coach, Robert Saleh, in a long line of defensive-oriented Jets leaders who do things like punting on a fourth-and-two from the Jets 39-yard line with his team, needing to win to save their season for another week, down by two scores with just 11:30 remaining.
It may be a sign that Saleh’s “All gas and no brake” shtick is wearing off, that his team did not look like they came out ready to play on Sunday, falling behind, 17-3, in the first quarter. Quarterback Mike White, cleared to play through broken ribs thanks to a military-grade flak jacket and because Wilson has been the NFL’s worst QB by many metrics, seemed lost, inaccurate on layup tosses and forcing balls into coverage. That Saleh didn’t find an opportunity to change the pace by inserting sparkplug Chris Streveler for a single offensive snap (he did play special teams) while White was checking down on fourth-and-14 throws was head-scratching. There was nothing tricky from the mind of overmatched Offensive Coordinator Mike LaFleur either—no jet sweeps or flea flickers—just the standard “let’s try to establish the run against eight-or-nine-men boxes.” There were a handful of solid rush attempts, but far too many put New York behind the chains, with rbdsm.com showing a 35% success rate and a minus-0.161 expected points added per play on handoffs.
The result: The Jets have now gone more than 8.5 quarters without scoring a touchdown. Tough to win games with such ineptitude, no matter how well the defense played.
And now it’s also 12 years without a single playoff berth, the NFL’s longest active drought. Jets fans can’t even envision a brighter future ahead. How can this be fixed? Does the organization blow it all up again, starting with Douglas, who has had one decent Draft in three attempts, and that was only because of the obscene capital the team possessed in 2022?
No one knows how owner Woody Johnson will react to such an embarrassing conclusion to what he must have once thought was the making of a promising season. It’s a pretty good guess that he won’t want to have his club go into next season with Wilson, White, Joe Flacco, and Streveler as his quarterback options.
Whether anyone else pays for this collapse won’t be announced until after next week’s finale in Miami. It’s a meaningless affair for New York, one they’d be better off losing to maximize their 2023 Draft position.
So of course they’ll probably win and try to hoodwink fans into thinking that it will be a springboard into a rejuvenated 2023 campaign. As if we haven’t heard that one before.