Sorry, But There’s No Sugarcoating The Bitter End To The Jets Season
Who knows, by the time you read this, the Jets could have already blown their whole operation up--or maybe owner Woody Johnson might have been convinced to give it one more year.
What we do know is that this team is in the same mess that they always seem to be in—dusting off the stench of disappointment from another losing season with no hope that things will be better in the future.
Everyone’s to blame, from General Manager Joe Douglas, to Head Coach Robert Saleh and his staff, and to the players who failed to execute during winnable games.
Obviously, at the top of the organization chart sits Johnson, who, along with his brother Christopher during Woody’s tenure as U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom, have made this franchise a running joke. As I wrote last week, this season was another waste, another year aging Jets fans like me have gotten closer to death without the opportunity to see their team play in a Super Bowl.
There will be some who look at the totality of New York’s 7-10 campaign, measure it against preseason expectations, and conclude, “It wasn’t so bad.” Feel free to (figuratively) slap them in the head. Back then, with Gang Green coming off a brutal 4-13 record and resorting to prayer that quarterback Zach Wilson would take a leap after a horrible rookie season, seven wins might have been deemed the team’s ceiling.
Except that expectations changed when the Jets took advantage of opportunities to face a slew of backup quarterbacks in racing out to a 7-4 start. Six consecutive losses later, including an 11-6 eyesore in Miami on Sunday, and it’s now 12 straight seasons without a single playoff berth, the NFL’s longest active drought. No one should be sugarcoating such a bitter end.
The proximate causes for the collapse have been laid out in these posts all season. They were on full display on Sunday, where the team’s inability to develop a quarterback it can trust once again left them vulnerable to a singular mistake that cost them the game. In this case it was a horse-collar penalty committed by linebacker Quincy Williams on the first play after the two-minute warning that turned what would have been a 3rd-and-9-for third-string quarterback Skylar Thompson into a Miami first down from within game-winning field goal range. Since Jets Head Coach Robert Saleh had already needlessly burned two timeouts in the third quarter, the Dolphins were able to milk the clock down to 18 seconds before Jason Sanders booted a 50-yard field goal. By then, all the Jets could attempt in their last gasp was a multi-lateral farce that ended up as a point spread-covering safety.
New York’s offense’s ineptitude during their slide was repugnant. Wilson was benched for the second time this season in favor of Mike White, who broke five ribs in a loss at Buffalo. In the final three games, the Jets did not score a single touchdown over 31 possessions, another NFL-leading drought. Four different quarterbacks—Wilson, White, Chris Streveler, and, in Sunday’s finale, Joe Flacco were thrown into the mix. None of them deserve to be back for next season.
On-site media reports indicated that Johnson was seething after Sunday’s debacle, which often means that heads will roll this week. If I trusted that he knew where to look to bring in a capable management team, I wouldn’t be opposed to it.
Douglas’ whiffs from his first two Drafts will be felt in the coming years, especially since his overpayments for underperforming free agents will be making major imprints on the 2023 salary cap. For instance, you would have hoped that wide receiver Denzel Mims could replace Corey Davis should Douglas need Davis’ $10.5 million cap savings to boost other positions. Unfortunately, Mims, Douglas’ 2020 second-round pick, has been a bust.
Folks commend Douglas for tabbing cornerback Ahmad “Sauce” Gardner and wide receiver Garrett Wilson in the first round of the 2022 Draft, but a computer could have made those consensus picks. Outside of those two potentially core players, how many other legitimate 2023 starters will come from Douglas’ drafts? I’ve got running back Breece Hall, offensive lineman Alijah Vera-Ticker, slot corner Michael Carter, and…that’s about it. Not good.
Douglas’ biggest miscues, of course, came in the sport’s most important area—the coach/quarterback partnership. I can forgive his big bet on Wilson with the 2021 No. 2 overall pick, but to surround him with a defensive-minded head coach in Saleh who then hired his inexperienced buddy Mike LaFleur as the team’s offensive coordinator was a compounding sin. The death of assistant coach Gregg Knapp in the 2021 preseason was an underrated tragedy at every level, but it doesn’t absolve Douglas for this season’s regression.
Look at what the Giants just accomplished when they hired a known quarterback developer/play-caller as Head Coach and paired him with a defensive coordinator with an equally strong resume. Brian Daboll and Wink Martindale are now preparing for a playoff game next weekend with a QB in Daniel Jones who was previously deemed so unreliable that the team didn’t even exercise his fifth-year option. Meanwhile, Saleh and his staff await Johnson’s decision as to their fates.
My gut says that Johnson will just force Saleh into making LaFleur the scapegoat for the Jets’ season-ending crash, even if he was only a small part of the problem. Johnson probably doesn’t want to reinvent the wheel while paying Douglas and Saleh to not work for him.
Johnson doesn’t understand how the wheel works in the first place, which is why Jets fans continue to live in abject misery.